render array with images
The pre-render function for a 'link' element type is drupal_pre_render_link()...looking at the docs, you can pass these parameters:


#title: The link text to pass as argument to l().
#href: The URL path component to pass as argument to l().
#options: (optional) An array of options to pass to l().


You can force a link prepared through l() to display HTML by passing 'html' =&gt; TRUE as an option, so you should be able to do the same through the render array:

$image = theme('image', array('path' =&gt; 'images/link1img.png'));

$link = array(
  '#type'    =&gt; 'link',
  '#title'   =&gt; $image,
  '#href'    =&gt; 'http://www.link1.example',
  '#options' =&gt; array('html' =&gt; TRUE, 'title' =&gt; 'link1'),
  '#suffix'  =&gt; '&lt;br /&gt;',
);