Joseph Paelinck was a painter from the Southern Netherlands.

Paelinck attended the Royal Academy of Fine Arts (Ghent) and then with Jacques-Louis David in Paris, where he painted in 1804 A Judgment of Paris, which earned him his first Academy Art Award for Ghent. After he had worked there a short time as a teacher, he went to Rome and stayed there for five years. He painted, among other things: Rome under Augustus for the Quirinal Palace and the Discovery of the Cross for St. Michael's Church in Ghent. He was later a professor at the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture in Brussels.

His many pupils included Charles Baugniet, François Antoine Bodumont, Edouard de Bièfve, Elisa De Gamond, Félix De Vigne, Jean Joseph Geens, Jozef Geirnaert, Joseph Meganck, Fanny Paelinck-Horgnies, Alfred Stevens, Joseph Cohen de Vries and Abraham Johannes Zeeman.