Valentine Cameron Prinsep, RA

(British, 1838-1904)

An Indian water carrier

Footnotes

Provenance
Sale including the contents of 17 Grove End Road, Hampton & Sons, London, 11 June 1913, lot 613.
Thomas Agnew & Sons.
C. P. Mason; sale, Sotheby's, Belgravia, 5 November 1974, lot 71.
Anon. sale, Sotheby's, Belgravia, 29 June, 1976, lot. 95.
The Forbes Collection of Victorian Pictures and Works of Art, Christie's, London, 20 February 2003, lot 274.
With The Fine Art Society, London.
The Irish News Collection (acquired from the above).

Literature
William Cosmo Monkhouse, British Contemporary Artists, 1899, p.225.
F.G. Stephens, Lawrence Alma-Tadema, R.A., 1895, pp. 15-16.
Rudolph de Cordova, 'The panels in Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema's Hall', The Strand Magazine, Vol. XXIV, 1902, pp. 615-630, ill. p.617

Valentine 'Val' Prinsep born in Calcutta in 1838. He studied in Paris at the atelier of Charles Gleyre; among his fellow students were Whistler and Poynter. He was also close friends of Millais and Burne-Jones, travelling with them to Italy and working with them on the decoration for the hall of the Oxford Union. He exhibited at the Royal Academy from 1862 until his death in 1904 and was elected a full Academician in 1894. A striking figure, he married late in life but was said earlier to have had a love affair with Kate, youngest daughter of Charles Dickens. In 1877 he returned to India at the request of Lord Lytton to paint the Delhi Durbar, the huge gathering to celebrate the proclamation of Queen Victoria as Empress of India. De Cordova describes An Indian Water Carrier as 'an Indian girl going down the sacred steps to the Ganges to fill her pitchers with water'. It was undoubtedly inspired by Prinsep's experiences on the sub-continent, many of which are published in Imperial India: An Artist's Journals.