Valentine Cameron Prinsep
Encyclopedia
Painting
Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface . The application of the medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush but other objects can be used. In art, the term painting describes both the act and the result of the action. However, painting is...
of the Pre-Raphaelite school.
Early life
Born in Calcutta, India, his parents were Henry Thoby Prinsep, for sixteen years a member of the Council of IndiaCouncil of India
The Council of India was the name given at different times to two separate bodies associated with British rule in India.The original Council of India was established by the Regulating Act of 1773 as a council of four formal advisors to the Governor-General at Fort William...
, and Sarah Monckton Pattle, sister of pioneering photographer Julia Margaret Cameron
Julia Margaret Cameron
Julia Margaret Cameron was a British photographer. She became known for her portraits of celebrities of the time, and for photographs with Arthurian and other legendary themes....
(née Pattle) and Maria Jackson (née Pattle), grandmother of Virginia Woolf
Virginia Woolf
Adeline Virginia Woolf was an English author, essayist, publisher, and writer of short stories, regarded as one of the foremost modernist literary figures of the twentieth century....
and Vanessa Bell
Vanessa Bell
Vanessa Bell was an English painter and interior designer, a member of the Bloomsbury group, and the sister of Virginia Woolf.- Biography and art :...
. Henry and Sarah had settled at Little Holland House
Little Holland House
Little Holland House was the dower house of Holland House in Kensington, England. Henry Thoby Prinsep, a director of East India Company and member of the Prinsep family, gained a 21-year lease on it from Henry Fox, 4th Baron Holland thanks to the painter George Frederic Watts, a friend of both the...
and made it a centre of artistic society.
Career
George Frederic Watts
George Frederic Watts, OM was a popular English Victorian painter and sculptor associated with the Symbolist movement. Watts became famous in his lifetime for his allegorical works, such as Hope and Love and Life...
, under whom his son first studied. Val Prinsep also worked in Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
in Marc-Charles-Gabriel Gleyre
Marc-Charles-Gabriel Gleyre
Charles Gleyre , was a Swiss artist. He took over the studio of Paul Delaroche in 1843 and taught a number of younger artists who became prominent, including Claude Monet, Pierre Auguste Renoir, Alfred Sisley and James Abbott McNeill Whistler.His father and mother died when he was eight or nine...
's atelier: 'Taffy' in his friend George du Maurier
George du Maurier
George Louis Palmella Busson du Maurier was a French-born British cartoonist and author, known for his cartoons in Punch and also for his novel Trilby. He was the father of actor Gerald du Maurier and grandfather of the writers Angela du Maurier and Dame Daphne du Maurier...
's novel Trilby
Trilby (novel)
Trilby is a novel by George du Maurier and one of the most popular novels of its time, perhaps the second best selling novel of the Fin de siècle after Bram Stoker's Dracula. Published serially in Harper's Monthly in 1894, it was published in book form in 1895 and sold 200,000 copies in the United...
, is said to have been sketched from him. He was an intimate friend of John Everett Millais
John Everett Millais
Sir John Everett Millais, 1st Baronet, PRA was an English painter and illustrator and one of the founders of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.-Early life:...
and of Edward Burne-Jones
Edward Burne-Jones
Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones, 1st Baronet was a British artist and designer closely associated with the later phase of the Pre-Raphaelite movement, who worked closely with William Morris on a wide range of decorative arts as a founding partner in Morris, Marshall, Faulkner, and Company...
, with whom he travelled in Italy. He had a share with Rossetti
Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Dante Gabriel Rossetti was an English poet, illustrator, painter and translator. He founded the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in 1848 with William Holman Hunt and John Everett Millais, and was later to be the main inspiration for a second generation of artists and writers influenced by the movement,...
and others in the decoration of the hall of the Oxford Union
Oxford Union
The Oxford Union Society, commonly referred to simply as the Oxford Union, is a debating society in the city of Oxford, Britain, whose membership is drawn primarily but not exclusively from the University of Oxford...
. With other members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood
Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood
The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was a group of English painters, poets, and critics, founded in 1848 by William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais and Dante Gabriel Rossetti...
, he taught at the Working Men's College
Working Men's College
The Working Men's College- WMC, being among the earliest adult education institutions established in the United Kingdom, is Europe's oldest extant centre for adult education and perhaps one of its smallest...
during the mid 19c.
Prinsep first exhibited at the Royal Academy
Royal Academy
The Royal Academy of Arts is an art institution based in Burlington House on Piccadilly, London. The Royal Academy of Arts has a unique position in being an independent, privately funded institution led by eminent artists and architects whose purpose is to promote the creation, enjoyment and...
in 1862 with his Bianca Capella, his first picture, which attracted marked notice, being a portrait (1866) of General Gordon in Chinese costume. Prinsep lent the costume to Millais who used it in his own painting Esther
Esther (Millais painting)
Esther is a painting by John Everett Millais depicting the central character from the Biblical Book of Esther. It is from Millais's Aesthetic phase, when he was influenced by the work of Frederic Leighton and James McNeill Whistler....
.
The best of his later exhibits were A Versailles, The Emperor Theophilus chooses his Wife, The Broken Idol and The Goose Girl. He was elected A.R.A. in 1879 and R.A
Royal Academy
The Royal Academy of Arts is an art institution based in Burlington House on Piccadilly, London. The Royal Academy of Arts has a unique position in being an independent, privately funded institution led by eminent artists and architects whose purpose is to promote the creation, enjoyment and...
. in 1894. In 1877 he went to India and painted a huge picture of the Delhi Durbar
Delhi Durbar
The Delhi Durbar , meaning "Court of Delhi", was a mass assembly at Coronation Park, Delhi, India, to mark the coronation of a King and Queen of the United Kingdom. Also known as the Imperial Durbar, it was held three times, in 1877, 1903, and 1911, at the height of the British Empire. The 1911...
, exhibited in 1880, and afterwards hung at Buckingham Palace
Buckingham Palace
Buckingham Palace, in London, is the principal residence and office of the British monarch. Located in the City of Westminster, the palace is a setting for state occasions and royal hospitality...
.
Personal life
In 1884, he married Florence, daughter of industrialist and art collector Frederick Richards LeylandFrederick Richards Leyland
Frederick Richards Leyland was a Liverpool shipowner and art collector.-Career:Leyland served as an apprentice in the firm of John Bibby, Sons & Co, where he rose to become a partner. In 1867 he took on the tenancy of Speke Hall, Liverpool and in 1869 bought a house in London at 49 Princes Gate...
.
Writings
Prinsep wrote two plays, Cousin Dick and Monsieur le Duc, produced at the Court and the St James's theatres respectively; two novels; and Imperial India: an Artists Journal (1879).He was an enthusiastic volunteer, and one of the founders of the Artists Rifles.
External links
- Val Prinsep, R.A., Dead, The New York TimesThe New York TimesThe New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
, 13 November 1924 - Artcyclopedia links to paintings