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

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.

[1][2] His mother was a sister of the photographer Julia Margaret Cameron[1] and Maria Jackson (née Pattle), grandmother of Virginia Woolf and Vanessa Bell.

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.

[5] 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.

[7] 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.

[8][2] Later exhibits were À Versailles, The Emperor Theophilus chooses his Wife, The Broken Idol and The Goose Girl.