Sophia Theresa "Sophie" Pemberton (13 February 1869 – 31 October 1959) was a Canadian painter who was British Columbia's first professional woman artist. Despite the social limitations placed on female artists at the time, she made a noteworthy contribution to Canadian art and, in 1899, was the first woman to win the Prix Julian from the Académie Julian for portraiture. Pemberton also was the first artist from British Columbia to receive international acclaim when her work was exhibited at the Royal Academy in London (1897).

Pemberton married twice with subsequent changes in surname, complicating her visibility as an artist. She lived half her life in England, exhibiting frequently there but infrequently in Canada. She returned to her hometown Victoria on occasion to reconnect with family and friends.

She also played a role in Emily Carr's 'discovery'. The two artists grew up together in the same small city. While in British Columbia in 1921, Pemberton talked with Harold Mortimer-Lamb about Emily Carr. He told Eric Brown, director at the National Gallery of Canada about Carr, leading to an invitation by the National Gallery of Canada for her work to be part of an exhibition on West Coast Art in 1927.

Born in Victoria, British Columbia, Sophie, as she was known throughout her life, was the daughter of Theresa Jane Grautoff and Joseph Despard Pemberton (1821–1893), an engineer and surveyor, employed by the Hudson's Bay Company on Vancouver Island. He was later a politician and successful businessman.

Pemberton first studied art at Mrs. Cridge's Reformed Episcopal School and at age 13 had two watercolour landscapes included in a presentation album for the visiting Princess Louise, Duchess of Argyll. She often sketched en plein air, and recorded landscapes of the Cowichan Bay and Shawnigan Lake areas north of Victoria as well as the Fraser Valley. She attended finishing school in Brighton, UK where she received preliminary training in oil painting. Working from her studio in the family home, Pemberton aimed at becoming a professional artist.

In 1890, she travelled to London and studied with Arthur S. Cope following the curriculum of the South Kensington School of Art, where she excelled in her studies. She returned to Victoria afterward but came back to England, to the Clapham School of Art (1892–1893), taking the South Kensington School exams, receiving first-class grades in drawing from life, the antique, and still life, and had begun to attend the Westminster School of Art when in 1893 her father died and she experienced an emotional and physical breakdown, returning to Victoria the following year to recuperate. Her life would be punctuated, at inconvenient and unexpected moments with episodes of (possibly psychosomatic) ill health with severe physical weakness.

In London again in 1895, she established herself in a studio in Chelsea, and met a network of artists, among them Anna Nordgren and Canadian artists Sydney Strickland Tully (with whom she shared a painting model) and Florence Carlyle. She went on a sketching trip to Brittany with Nordgren in 1896. Between 1896 and 1898 Pemberton exhibited steadily, receiving positive reviews. She was a member of the women's 91 Art Club and was active in the movement for women's suffrage. A major breakthrough for Pemberton came when the Royal Academy of Arts accepted Daffodils, 1897, a large academic realist oil painting, for its annual London summer exhibition.

In 1898, she enrolled at the Académie Julian in Paris, studying with Jean Paul Laurens and Jean-Joseph Benjamin-Constant. It was a time-period when women artists generally received segregated art training and their accomplishments often were considered secondary to that of men. In 1899, she had the honour of being the first woman to receive the Prix Julian, a gold medal and cash award presented annually for the best student portrait at the academie, in a contest open to both men and women.