The Captive

The Captive, from Sterne is a painting by Joseph Wright of Derby completed in 1774 and now in the National Gallery of Canada. Sterne's Captive, first exhibited by the artist in 1778, is a similar painting by Wright in the Derby Museum and Art Gallery. The latter painting resulted in a rare engraving, as its purchaser commissioned a print run of only twenty copies before the copper printing plate was destroyed. In 2012, Derby Museum commissioned another Captive painting from Emma Tooth. Description Both paintings show the despair of a traveller who finds himself abandoned in a foreign jail. The Captive title is based on the section of the same name in Laurence Sterne's A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy (1768). In the episode in question, the hero of the story, Yorick, imagines that he is imprisoned in the Bastille because he has lost his passport. Yorick is later released because his name is taken to indicate that he is an important person, because he is a court jester: Yorick is a jester in Shakespeare's play Hamlet. The journey takes place in 1762, when Britain was at war with France, and imprisonment was a real possibility for a traveller from a hostile country. History The pose of the model in Wright's first painting is the same as that used by Michelangelo when painting The Creation of Adam on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. And the first captive painting was made by Wright while in Rome in 1774. After its completion he had to import it back into Britain; Llewellyn Jewitt records that he nearly imported it free of tax but a late objection obliged him to pay import tax. The debate focused on whether the sitter was Roman and it was argued that the sitter should have been better dressed.