Valentine Prinsep, artist

Valentine Cameron Prinsep (Val)

Born Calcutta 1838; died London 1904; married Florence Leyland in 1884. Second son of Thoby and Sara Prinsep, Val entered Haileybury College as an Indian Civil Service recruit but decided instead on a career as an artist in London. He was closely associated with the Pre-Raphaelite school of painters, particularly Millais and Burne Jones, as well as G.F. Watts. He exhibited his own work widely, including at the Royal Academy. In 1877 he was commissioned to illustrate the Delhi durbar, and later wrote about his year in India in his book Imperial India: An artist’s journal.

Source http://press-files.anu.edu.au/downloads/press/p290761/html/Text/bsk...

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Val Prinsep was the son of a senior Indian Civil Servant, Thoby Prinsep, and his far more extrovert wife, Sara, one of the celebrated Pattle sisters, the most famous of whom was Julia Margaret Cameron 1815-1879, the great pioneering photographer. If any one individual could be described as a Pre-Raphaelite photographer it was she.

Prinsep was brought-up at Little Holland House in London, where his mother kept open house, and the most interesting artistic salon of the day. Habitues included Dickens, Tennyson, Bourne-Jones, Browning, Rossetti, and Carlyle. In the famous words of Sara Prinsep, G F Watts 'came to stay three days; he stayed thirty years.' Here under Watt's influence the young Val Prinsep decided to become a painter. Prinsep was a tall, powerfully built, imposing individual.

He became ARA in 1878, and a full RA in 1894. He was Professor of Painting at the RA from 1901 until his death. He married Florence Leyland, daughter of the industrial magnate and art collector Frederick Leyland, thus becoming extremely wealthy. Prinsep painted genre pictures and portraits. It is widely felt that Prinsep did not achieve his true potential- Watts felt that he just did not work hard enough. His paintings are held to be very uneven in quality. He was, though, an important figure in the Victorian art world

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Further Reading

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valentine_Cameron_Prinsep

http://www.artmagick.com/pictures/artist.aspx?artist=valentine-came...

http://www.victorianweb.org/victorian/painting/prinsep/index.html

http://www.artrenewal.org/pages/artist.php?artistid=390

http://www.the-athenaeum.org/art/list.php?m=a&s=tu&aid=1520

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Valentine_Cameron_Prinsep

Valentine Cameron "Val" Prinsep RA (Calcutta 14 February 1838 – 11 November 1904 London) was a British painter of the Pre-Raphaelite school.

Born in Calcutta, India, his parents were Henry Thoby Prinsep, for sixteen years a member of the Council of India, and Sarah Monckton Pattle, sister of pioneering photographer Julia Margaret Cameron (née Pattle) and Maria Jackson (née Pattle), grandmother of Virginia Woolf and Vanessa Bell. Henry and Sarah had settled at Little Holland House and made it a centre of artistic society.