Valentine Cameron Prinsep 1838-1904

A most interesting artist, whose very varied output reflected his illustrious family and numerous close, artistic friendships. His mother, Sara, was one of several Pattle sisters, including the remarkable photographer, Julia Margaret Cameron, and Mia, grandmother to Viginia Woolf and Vanessa Bell[i]. His wife - whom he married in 1884 - was Florence, daughter of the enormously wealthy shipowner, Frederick Leyland, who was James McNeill Whistler’s principal patron (works including the lovely portrait of Mrs. Francis Leyland, Symphony in Flesh Colour and Pink, and the decorations of the Peacock Room, were for Leyland). Prinsep’s father was a director of the East India Company and Valentine (Val) was born in India. It was generally assumed that he would follow his father’s path. But, back in London, where the family leased Little Holland House in Kensington in 1850, the Prinseps were quickly at the heart of a busy salon of numerous visiting artists and writers, chief of whom was the artist George Frederic Watts, who lived with them for 24 years. Indeed, through the later 1850s, Val Prinsep found himself befriended by many leading artists – not just Watts, who took on Prinsep as his pupil, but also Frederick (later, Lord) Leighton and the Pre-Raphaelites.

Watts had already enjoyed great success early in his career. In 1843, he had won the competition to design murals for the new Houses of Parliament. His success allowed Watts to make his first trip, to study in Italy, where he remained for four years, not only immersing himself in learning from Renaissance paintings and sculptures, but also becoming great friends with the British ambassador, Lord Holland, and his wife, and staying with them in their house in Florence. Thus, when he moved back to join the Prinseps in London, he was ideally placed to introduce the young Valentine to a wide array of cultural influences.

Also living close by was Leighton, who joined the Prinsep circle in 1855. Again, here was a young and ambitious - and already successful - artist, who had travelled widely through Europe and, in 1854, had studied in Florence, where he copied Italian Renaissance artists: there are numerous drawings by him after Giotto, Botticelli, Michelangelo, Raphael and Signorelli, now held in the Leighton House Museum. During the following years, Leighton spent much time in Paris, where he met and admired Ingres and Delacroix. Thus, again, Val Prinsep was privileged to enjoy the advice and guidance of a mature artist, who could offer an unusually broad range of ideas and opportunities.

Val Prinsep’s charmed artistic life continued in the same vein. In 1856-7, Watts took Prinsep with him when he visited Sir Charles Thomas Newton’s (somewhat unscientific) excavations at the ancient Greek city, Halicarnassus (now in Turkey). In 1857, the Prinsep circle welcomed members of the pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (PRB) and Val Prinsep became friends particularly with Rossetti and Burne-Jones. In 1857, the student was working with Rossetti, Burne-Jones, Wiliam Morris and others, helping them to paint the murals in the newly-built Debating Room of the Oxford Union (now the Oxford Union Old Library). It was Rossetti who determined that the subjects should be based on Sir Thomas Malory’s fifteenth century Le Morte d’ Arthur. Prinsep was uncertain about his capacity to undertake the work, admitting that, ‘I had not studied with Watts without being well aware of my own deficiencies in drawing – so I told Rossetti that I did not feel strong enough to undertake such work. ‘Nonsense,’ answered Rossetti…, (who) was so friendly and confident that I consented and joined the band at Oxford’. None of these artists had a thorough grasp of the techniques of fresco painting (let alone painting onto newly-laid plaster applied to a new brick wall) and the survival of the paintings remains very uncertain today. But, the large-scale murals, in their style, colour and themes, commanded a great deal of contemporary interest.

From 1859-60, Prinsep travelled to Paris, where he studied at Charles Gleyre's anti-establishment atelier. There, amongst his fellow students, he found Edward Poynter, George du Maurier and James McNeill Whistler. And, in 1859, with Burne-Jones, Prinsep visited Florence, Siena and Rome, where he not only studied and copied the work of many Renaissance artists, but also met and became very friendly with Robert Browning and his wife, Elizabeth.

One could go on: suffice it to say that Valentine Prinsep was an extraordinarily privileged painter and there can be no doubt that his plentiful and very varied output reflects the impact of some of the best and most challenging ideas of the contemporary artistic culture. His first success at the Royal Academy was in 1862, where he showed a portrait of General Gordon; his most prestigious commission came in 1877, when he painted a very large picture of the Delhi Durbar at the behest of the Viceroy of India. He exhibited widely, at the RA - being elected ARA in 1878 and RA in 1894 - and also at some of the more independent galleries (most of them initially set up in opposition to the RA), including the Grosvenor Gallery and the Society of British Artists (whereof, in 1886, Whistler became President). Prinsep’s subject matter included images profoundly influenced by Rossetti, Burne-Jones and the PRB – for example, the deliciously colourful and beguiling figure in mediaeval dress, The Queen was in the Parlour, Eating Bread and Honey, exhibited in 1860[1] and, from 1863, Il Barbagianni (the barn owl, sometimes seen as a symbol of mortality), painted after the death of Rossetti’s wife, Lizzie Siddall. Burne-Jones’s ambiguously threatening femmes fatales find echoes in Medea the Sorceress[2], from 1880, whilst the pensive, slightly melancholy allegories of Watts can be traced in the 1897, At the First Touch of Winter, Summer Fades Away[3]. Other pictures of women were more overtly sensual, including, A Venetian Water Carrier, 1863[4], and At the Golden Gate, c.1882[5], which surely owe something to Leighton, or the direct and independent assertiveness of a young laundress, painted In a Street in Venice, c.1904[6]. Of course, Prinsep did not only paint women: he produced some powerful portraits of influential men - including a really lovely head of Ruskin, now in the Ashmolean - and several large, narrative and history paintings. But, his pictures of women, in all their variety, are the ones which impress themselves upon my imagination. What stands out is that the figures often have a direct gaze and a confident poise; they usually fill the picture frame – which lends them a quality of authority, even when they are at their most modest; the compositions are frequently embellished with intricate patterning and the colour is always rich and jewel-like – perhaps reminding us of the Indian heritage of his family? All these qualities often bring to mind not only Prinsep’s British artistic contemporaries, but also the glorious work of Titian and Veronese, the coolness of Raphael, the incisive expressions of Leonardo and the direct and powerful gaze of Mantegna’s portraits. In other words, Val Prinsep’s art really reflects the full breadth and depth of his cultural hinterland. Whilst even some of his contemporaries were somewhat critical of Prinsep’s catholic taste, suggesting that he should have focused more consistently on a characteristic style… to my mind, this is his glory.

© Dr. Hilary Taylor, 2025

[1] Manchester Art Gallery.

[2] Southwark Art Collection

[3] Gallery Oldham

[4] Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool.

[5] Manchester Art Gallery