1909 in art

February 20 – Filippo Tommaso Marinetti's Futurist Manifesto is first published, in the French newspaper Le Figaro.
May–June – Claude Monet's Water Lilies series of paintings are first exhibited, at Paul Durand-Ruel's gallery in Paris.
July 22 – Widowed Irish-born painter John Lavery marries Irish American painter Hazel Martyn.
Guillaume Apollinaire's first book of poetry is illustrated with woodcuts by André Derain.
Léon Bakst begins painting scenery for Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes, beginning with Cleopatra.
Robert Delaunay begins painting his Saint-Sévrin, City and Eiffel Tower series.
Lithuanian Jewish sculptor Jacques Lipchitz moves to Paris to study and work.
Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque create the first works of analytical cubism.
Sonderbund westdeutscher Kunstfreunde und Künstler established in Düsseldorf.
Kunsthalle Mannheim established as a permanent art gallery.
Reformation Wall created in Geneva by Swiss architects Charles Dubois, Alphonse Laverrière, Eugène Monod and Jean Taillens with figures by French sculptors Paul Landowski and Henri Bouchard.

Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky is commissioned by Nicholas II of Russia to begin a record in color photography of his empire.
Henri Gaudier meets Sophie Brzeska at the Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève in Paris.
Wilhelm von Bode purchases the wax bust Flora cheaply from a London dealer for the Kaiser Friedrich Museum in Berlin, believing it to be by Leonardo da Vinci. It is subsequently shown to be early 19th century English, probably by Richard Cockle Lucas.^[1]

January 16 – Clement Greenberg, American art critic (d.1994).
January 25 – Joseph Solman, American painter (d. 2008).
February 7 – Wilhelm Freddie, Danish painter and sculptor (d. 1995).
February 12 – Zoran Mušič, Slovenian- born painter (d. 2005).
February 17 – Gertrude Abercrombie, American painter (d. 1977).
February 19 – Enrico Donati, Italian- born American Surrealist painter and sculptor (d. 2008).
February 26 – Michel Tapié, French artist, critic, curator, and art collector (d. 1987).
March 8 – H. J. Ward, American illustrator (d. 1945).
March 13 – Reynolds Stone, English wood engraver (d. 1979).
March 22 – Milt Kahl, American animator (d. 1987).
April 3 – Graham Stuart Thomas, English horticultural artist, author and garden designer (d. 2003).
April 30 – F. E. McWilliam, Irish sculptor (d. 1992).
May 17 – Giulio Carlo Argan, Italian art historian and politician (d. 1992).
June 14 – Ettore DeGrazia, American impressionist, painter, sculptor and lithographer (d. 1982).
June 26 – Wolfgang Reitherman, German-American animator (d. 1985).

July 13 – Marie-Thérèse Walter, mistress of Pablo Picasso (d. 1977).
September 14 – Peter Scott, English ornithologist, conservationist, painter (d. 1989).
September 23 – Marianne Straub, Swiss-born British textile designer (d. 1994).
September 28 – Al Capp, cartoonist (d. 1979).
October 13 – Herblock, political cartoonist (d. 2001).
October 19 – Marguerite Perey, French physicist and academic (d. 1975)^[2]
October 28 – Francis Bacon, Irish-born British figurative painter (d. 1992).
November 5 – Milena Pavlović-Barili, Serbian painter and poet (d. 1945).
November 6 – Herman Rose (Herman Rappaport), American painter (d. 2007).
December 25 – Philip Zec, British political cartoonist (d. 1983).

Events