Val Prinsep

A carte-de-visite portrait of the Pre-Raphaelite artist Valentine Cameron (‘Val’) Prinsep (1838-1904), photographed in Germany a year before his death.

Born in Calcutta in 1838, his parents were Henry Thoby Prinsep, who served as member of the Council of India for sixteen years, and his wife Sarah Monckton née Pattle, sister of the photographer Julia Margaret Cameron. Another sister was the grandmother of Virginia Woolf and Vanessa Bell. On their return to England, his parents settled at Little Holland House in Kensington, which became a centre of artistic society.

Prinsep studied under Watts and became an intimate friend of Millais and Burne-Jones. He first exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1862. In 1877 he went to India and painted a huge picture of the Delhi Durbar, which was exhibited in 1880 at the Royal Academy. It was afterwards presented to Queen Victoria and hung at Buckingham Palace.

Prinsep died at Holland Park in West London on 11 November 1904 and was buried in Brompton Cemetery, London, where his extremely distinctive monument in Roman style still survives.

Photographed in 1903 (blindstamp, lower right-hand corner) by T. H. Voigt of Homburg in Germany.