page_title: The Captive (painting)
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: The Captive (painting) / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Study of John Stelvelys head for the Captive II by Joseph Wright of Derby
context_page_description: 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.
context_section_description: 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.
  The first painting was made into a stipple engraving by Thomas Ryder in 1779 and it was published by John and Josiah Boydell in 1786. However an earlier mezzotint engraving by John Raphael Smith of the later 1778 painting had been commissioned by John Milnes after he bought the painting at a Royal Academy show. Milnes obtained a print of every Wright painting that he could, but the print that he commissioned of his own painting was limited to just twenty copies before the plate was destroyed. This engraving is now exceptionally rare and is only available in a small number of British institutions and none abroad.
caption: A study of John Stavely for Wright's second version
exif: {}