Valentine Cameron Prinsep

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Valentine Cameron Prinsep Template:Post-nominals (14 February 1838 – 4 November 1904) was a British painter of the Pre-Raphaelite school.

Early life

Born in Calcutta, India, he was the second child of Henry Thoby Prinsep, a civil servant of the British Raj, and his wife Sara Monckton Pattle. His home was shared by the painter George Frederick Watts and the Little Holland House salon.<ref name=sadrb>Template:Citation</ref><ref name="ODNB">Template:Cite ODNB</ref> His mother was a sister of the photographer Julia Margaret Cameron<ref name=sadrb/> and Maria Jackson (née Pattle), grandmother of Virginia Woolf and Vanessa Bell.

Henry and Sara Prinsep returned to England in 1843. They settled in 1851 at Little Holland House, and made it a centre of artistic society.<ref name="ODNB"/>

File:Valentine Cameron Prinsep00.jpg
Prinsep, 1883 by Frank Dudman

Studies, travel, painter

File:Portrait of Valentine Prinsep by Alphonse Legros.jpg
Portrait of Prinsep by Alphonse Legros, British Museum

Henry Thoby Prinsep was a friend of the painter George Frederic Watts, under whom his son first studied,Template:Sfn and travelled with Watts in 1856–57 to Sir Charles Thomas Newton's excavation of Halicarnassus. Valentine then went to Charles Gleyre's atelier in Paris. There James Abbott McNeill Whistler, Edward Poynter, and George du Maurier were among his fellow students, and he was later the original for Taffy in Du Maurier's novel Trilby. After Paris, Prinsep passed to Italy. With Edward Burne-Jones he visited Siena and there made the acquaintance of Robert Browning, of whom he saw much in Rome during the winter of 1859–60.Template:Sfn

Prinsep was a close friend of John Everett Millais, and of Burne-Jones, with whom he travelled further in Italy. He had a share with Dante Gabriel Rossetti and others in the decoration of the hall of the Oxford Union.Template:Sfn With other members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, he taught at the Working Men's College during the mid-19th century.<ref name=Harrison>J. F. C. Harrison ,A History of the Working Men's College (1854–1954), Routledge Kegan Paul, 1954</ref> He first exhibited at the Royal Academy of Arts in 1862 with his Bianca Capella, his first picture, which attracted notice as a portrait (1866) of General Gordon in Chinese costume.Template:Sfn Prinsep lent the costume to Millais who used it in his own painting Esther.Template:Sfn

From 1862 to his death Prinsep was an annual exhibitor at the Royal Academy. He was elected A.R.A. in 1879 and R.A. in 1894.Template:Sfn His marriage in 1884 made Prinsep a wealthy man, and he became a company director and landowner.<ref name="ODNB"/>

He was an enthusiastic volunteer and one of the founders of the Artists RiflesTemplate:Sfn in 1859.

Death and monument

File:Valentine Prinsep Monument Brompton.jpg
Monument in Brompton Cemetery, London
File:Inscription on grave of Valentine Cameron Princep.jpg
Inscription on the grave of Valentine Cameron Prinsep

Prinsep died at Holland Park, west London in 1904, and is buried in Brompton Cemetery, London.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> He was buried with his wife Florence. Their distinctive monument lies on the western path between the north entrance and the central buildings.Template:Sfn It has a stepped plinth with bronze plaques surmounted by a tomb chest on eight columns. The chest is carved with 14th-century style figures in a colonnade of ogee arches. The monument is Grade II listed.<ref>Template:National Heritage List for England</ref>

Works

Prinsep's major paintings were Miriam watching the infant Moses (exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1867), A Venetian lover (1868), Bacchus and Ariadne (1869), News from abroad (1871), The linen gatherers (1876), The gleaners, and A minuet.Template:Sfn

In 1877, Prinsep returned to India and painted a huge picture of the Delhi Durbar. It was a commission from Robert Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Earl of Lytton, the Viceroy of India. It was exhibited in 1880 at the Royal Academy, presented to Queen Victoria and afterwards hung at Buckingham Palace. This "colossal work" attracted press comment, positive and negative.<ref>'Royal Academy Exhibition (First Notice)', The Times, 3 May 1880, p. 9.</ref><ref name="ODNB"/> Later exhibits were À Versailles, The Emperor Theophilus chooses his Wife, The Broken Idol and The Goose Girl.Template:Sfn

Prinsep wrote two plays, Cousin Dick and Monsieur le Duc, produced at the Royal Court Theatre and the St James's Theatre theatres respectively; two novels; and Imperial India: an Artist's Journal (1879).Template:Sfn

Family

Prinsep married in 1884 Florence née Leyland, daughter of Frederick Richards Leyland of Wootten Hall, Liverpool.Template:Sfn She survived him, they had three sons.Template:Sfn

  • Frederick Thoby Leyland (1886–1936), a shipping director. He married Françoise Catherine Pauline Greenall, she survived him.
  • Anthony Leyland (1888–1942), a theatre manager. He married Marie Lohr in 1912, they divorced in 1928. He married Margaret Bannerman in 1928, they divorced in 1939.<ref>Template:Cite ODNB</ref>
  • Nicholas John Andrew Leyland (1894–1983), a stockbroker. He married Anita Elson in 1930, they divorced in 1936. He married Celia Glyn in 1938, she survived him.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

References

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Sources

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