Events from the year 1850 in art.

• Controversial exhibition of Pre-Raphaelite paintings by Holman Hunt and Millais at the Royal Academy,^[1] Millais' Christ in the House of His Parents being attacked for its ultra-realism. James Collinson resigns from the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, which then dissolves.
• Francisco Goya's engravings, Proverbios, are posthumously published.
• Edouard Pingret relocates to Mexico City.

• Grand Prix de Rome, painting: William-Adolphe Bouguereau, Paul Baudry.
• Grand Prix de Rome, sculpture:
• Grand Prix de Rome, architecture:
• Grand Prix de Rome, music: J.A. Charlot.

• Ivan Aivazovsky – The Ninth Wave
• Oswald Achenbach – Evening in the Campagna
• Hendrik van de Sande Bakhuyzen – The Artist Painting a Cow in a Meadow Landscape
• Théodore Chassériau – Othello and Desdemona in Venice
• Charles Allston Collins – Berengaria's Alarm
• James Collinson
  • Answering the Emigrant's Letter
  • The Renunciation of St. Elizabeth of Hungary
• Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot – Une Matinée
• Gustave Courbet
  • A Burial At Ornans
  • The Stone Breakers
• Hippolyte Delaroche – Bonaparte Crossing the Alps
• William Maw Egley – Prospero and Miranda (approximate date)
• Emmanuel Frémiet
  • Wounded Bear
  • Wounded Dog
• J. W. Glass -
  • John Rolfe and Pocahontas
• Horatio Greenough – The Rescue (statue)
• Francesco Hayez
  • The Meditation (first version)
  • Susanna at her Bath
• John Rogers Herbert
  • Children of the Painter
  • Cordelia Disinherited (oil on canvas, Harris Museum, Preston, Lancashire)
  • Lear Disinheriting Cordelia (fresco in Poets' Hall, Palace of Westminster)
• William Holman Hunt – A Converted British Family Sheltering a Christian Missionary from the Persecution of the Druids
• Daniel Huntington – Feckenham in the Tower
• Jan August Hendrik Leys – Divine Service in Holland
• Adolph von Menzel – Round Table at Sansouci
• John Everett Millais
  • Christ in the House of His Parents
  • Ferdinand Lured by Ariel
• Jean-François Millet – The Sower (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston)
• Dante Gabriel Rossetti – Ecce Ancilla Domini
• Ludwig von Schwanthaler (posthumous) – Bavaria statue
• Carl Spitzweg – The Bookworm
• George Frederic Watts – Found Drowned (approximate date)

• January 1 – Per Hasselberg, Swedish sculptor (died 1894)
• January 5 – Theodoor Verstraete, Belgian rural realist painter and printmaker (died 1907)
• January 27 – John Collier, English Pre-Raphaelite painter (died 1934)
• February 27 – Henry E. Huntington, American art collector (died 1927)
• March 9 – Sir Hamo Thornycroft, English sculptor (died 1925)
• April 19 – Edward John Gregory, English painter (died 1909)
• April 20
  • Daniel Chester French, American Aculptor (died 1931)
  • Jean-François Raffaëlli, French realist painter (died 1924)
• April 26 – Harry Bates, English sculptor (died 1899)
• May 8 – José Ferraz de Almeida Júnior, Brazilian painter (died 1899)
• July 7 – Max Schmalzl, Bavarian religious painter and illustrator (died 1930)
• September 29 – George Hitchcock, American-born painter en plein air (died 1913)
• November 22 – Georg Dehio, Estonian-born German art historian (died 1932)
• September 23 – Alfred Boucher, French sculptor (died 1934)
• November 28 – Robert Koehler, German-born American painter (died 1917)
• December 25 – Florence Griswold, American curator (died 1937)
• December 31 – John Wycliffe Lowes Forster, Canadian portrait painter (died 1938)

• January 16 – Daniel Caffé, German pastel painter of portraits (born 1750)
• January 20 – Lorenzo Bartolini, Italian sculptor (born 1777)
• January 22 – William Westall, English landscape painter (born 1781)
• January 27 – Johann Gottfried Schadow, sculptor (born 1764)
• February 23 – Sir William Allan, historical painter (born 1782)
• April 11 – Jean Augustin Daiwaille, Dutch portrait painter (born 1786)
• April 15 – Jules Robert Auguste, French Impressionist painter (born 1789)
• April 16 – Madame Marie Tussaud, French-born modeller of waxworks (born 1761)
• May – Richard James Wyatt, sculptor (born 1795)
• July 22 – Vicente López y Portaña, Spanish portrait painter (born 1772)
• August 13 – Sir Martin Archer Shee, Irish-born portrait painter (born 1769)
• August 27 – Henry Room, English portrait painter (born 1802)
• October 2 – Sarah Biffen, disabled English painter (born 1784)
• November 10 – Alexandre-Évariste Fragonard, French painter and sculptor in the troubadour style (born 1780)
• December 8 – Anatole Devosge, French painter (born 1770)
• date unknown
  • Jean Broc, painter (born 1771)
  • Francis Hervé, painter (born 1781)
  • François Mulard, Neoclassical French painter (born 1769)
  • Fei Danxu, Chinese painter in the Qing dynasty (born 1801)