1842 in art

Events

• 2 May – The Royal Academy Exhibition of 1842 opens in London
• David Roberts begins publication of Sketches in the Holy Land.
• Richard Dadd becomes mentally ill during a tour of the Middle East and is thought to be suffering from sunstroke.
• Construction work resumes on Cologne Cathedral, after a gap of nearly three centuries.
• George Hayter granted a knighthood.
• William Fox Talbot receives the Rumford Medal of the Royal Society.
• George R. Lewis records the famous carvings at Kilpeck church, Herefordshire.
• Dordrechts Museum established in the Netherlands.
• Grand sale of contents of Strawberry Hill House near London.

Works

• Thomas Brigstocke – Alnaschar, the Barber's fifth Brother
• Ford Madox Brown – Manfred on the Jungfrau
• Théodore Chassériau – The Descent from the Cross
• Thomas Cole – The Voyage of Life
• Gustave Courbet – Self-Portrait with a Black Dog
• Richard Dadd – Come unto these Yellow Sands
• Johan Christian Dahl
• *Frogner Manor
• *View from Stalheim
• William Powell Frith
• * Dolly Varden
• * Measuring Heights
• Benjamin Haydon
• * The Black Prince Thanking Lord James Audley for his Gallantry in the Battle of Poitiers
• * Curtius Leaping into the Gulf
• * The Maid of Saragossa
• * Wordsworth on Helvellyn
• Francesco Hayez – Samson and the Lion
• George Hayter – The Marriage of Queen Victoria
• Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres
• *Luigi Cherubini and the Muse of Lyric Poetry
• *Odalisque with Slave
• * Portrait of the Duke of Orléans
• Henry Inman – Portrait of Angelica Singleton Van Buren
• Edwin Landseer – There's No Place Like Home
• Charles Robert Leslie – Queen Katherine and Patience
• Daniel Maclise –
• * The Origin of the Harp
• * The Play Scene in Hamlet
• * Waterfall at St Nighton's Kieve
• William Mulready – Crossing the Ford
• Thomas Phillips – Portrait of Michael Faraday
• Richard Redgrave
• * Cinderella About to Try on the Glass Slipper
• * Ophelia Weaving Her Garlands
• J. M. W. Turner
• * Campo Santo, Venice
• * Peace – Burial at Sea
• * Snowstorm – steam boat off a harbour's mouth making signals in shallow water, and going by the lead
• * War. The Exile and the Rock Limpet
• * Rigi series of watercolours
• Franz Xaver Winterhalter – Portrait of Prince Albert

Births

• June 12 – Harry Hems, English architectural and ecclesiastical sculptor
• October 18 – Sydney Prior Hall, English portraitist and illustrator
• November 29 – William Blake Richmond, English painter and interior decorator
• December 16 – Otto Sinding, Norwegian painter
• December 18 – William Anderson, collector of Japanese art
• December 31 – Giovanni Boldini, Italian painter

Deaths

• March 16 - Archer James Oliver, British portrait painter
• March 30 – Marie Louise Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun, painter
• May 12 – Walenty Wańkowicz, Belarusian-Polish painter
• May 26 – James Stuart, Irish-Australian painter
• July 7 – Louis-André-Gabriel Bouchet, French historical painter
• July 28 – John Sell Cotman, English artist of the Norwich school especially watercolours
• August 28 – Peter Fendi, Austrian portrait and genre painter, engraver, and lithographer
• September 11 – Charles Codman, landscape painter of Portland, Maine
• November 17 – John Varley, English watercolour painter and astrologer date unknown
• * Giovanni Balestra, Italian engraver
• * George Barret, Jr., English landscape painter
• * Paolo Caronni, Italian engraver
• * Gilles-François Closson, Belgian landscape painter