Johann Georg Valentin Ruths was a German landscape painter and lithographer of the Düsseldorf School of painting and the Hamburg School.

As the son of a merchant, Valentin Ruths was initially also destined to become a merchant, but from 1843 he trained in this profession with the Hamburg painter and lithographer Carl Friedrich Beer. From 1846 he went to Munich, where he attended the polytechnic school and from 1847 the academy. He returned to Hamburg in 1848 and worked for the company Lithographisches Institut und Kupferdruckerei Charles Fuchs.

From 1850 to 1854 he attended the Düsseldorf Art Academy and trained as a landscape painter under Johann Wilhelm Schirmer. After Schirmer was appointed the first director of the newly founded Karlsruhe art school in 1854, Ruths also left the academy and set up his own studio in Düsseldorf. His former classmate at the academy, the painter and photographer Arnold Overbeck, photographed him in his studio in Düsseldorf. In 1855, he went to Italy for two years, mainly to Rome and the surrounding area.

From 1857 he lived in Hamburg again. He was a member of the Berlin Academy and from 1869 a member of the Academy in Vienna. Ruths received medals at exhibitions in Metz, Berlin (Golden Medal for Art, 1872) and Vienna. Ruths preferred to paint Elbe landscapes and Italian and Swiss motifs. "He was considered adept at depicting mountainous and flat landscapes, coastal and village scenes and was praised for the great power of his mood, vivid drawing and energetic use of color". Alongside Ascan Lutteroth, he is considered one of the most important Hamburg landscape painters of his time. He was also a member of the Hamburg Artists' Association of 1832.

From 1880, together with Arthur Fitger, he painted eight large murals for the staircase of the Hamburger Kunsthalle, depicting the four seasons and times of day. Alfred Lichtwark, the director of the Kunsthalle at the time, acquired a total of ten paintings from Ruths. Ruths also published landscape designs for school and private lessons (Hamburg 1878). He also had himself portrayed by Hermann Steinfurth and donated the portrait to the Hamburg Kunsthalle in 1893. Another portrait, an oil painting by Günther Gensler, which shows Valentin Ruths and his colleague Hermann Kauffmann visiting the painter, is also in the Hamburger Kunsthalle. His niece Amelie Ruths, who had received her first training with him, also became a well-known painter.