Events from the year 1842 in art.

Events

• David Roberts begins publication of Sketches in the Holy Land (chromolithographs).
• 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.^[1]

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 (National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.)
• 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
• Benjamin Haydon – Wordsworth on Helvellyn
• George Hayter – The Marriage of Queen Victoria
• Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres
  • Luigi Cherubini and the Muse of Lyric Poetry
  • Odalisque with Slave
• Daniel Maclise – The Play-scene in Hamlet
• Thomas Phillips – Michael Faraday
• J. M. W. Turner
  • 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

• 
  Thomas Cole, The Voyage of Life: Childhood
• 
  Thomas Cole, The Voyage of Life: Youth
• 
  Thomas Cole, The Voyage of Life: Manhood
• 
  Thomas Cole, The Voyage of Life: Old Age

Births

• June 12 – Harry Hems, English architectural and ecclesiastical sculptor (died 1916)
• October 18 – Sydney Prior Hall, English portraitist and illustrator (died 1922)
• November 29 – William Blake Richmond, English painter and interior decorator (died 1921)
• December 16 – Otto Sinding, Norwegian painter (died 1909)
• December 18 – William Anderson, collector of Japanese art (died 1900)
• December 31 – Giovanni Boldini, Italian painter (died 1931)

Deaths

• March 16 - Archer James Oliver, British portrait painter (born 1774)
• March 30 – Marie Louise Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun, painter (born 1755)^[2]
• May 12 – Walenty Wańkowicz, Belarusian-Polish painter (born 1799)
• May 26 – James Stuart, Irish-Australian painter (born 1802)
• July 7 – Louis-André-Gabriel Bouchet, French historical painter (born 1759)
• July 28 – John Sell Cotman, English artist of the Norwich school especially watercolours (born 1782)
• August 28 – Peter Fendi, Austrian portrait and genre painter, engraver, and lithographer (born 1796)
• September 11 – Charles Codman, landscape painter of Portland, Maine (born 1800)
• November 17 – John Varley, English watercolour painter and astrologer (born 1778)
• date unknown
  • Giovanni Balestra, Italian engraver (born 1774)
  • George Barret, Jr., English landscape painter (born 1767)
  • Paolo Caronni, Italian engraver (born 1779)
  • Gilles-François Closson, Belgian landscape painter (born 1796)