Talk:The Captive (painting)

A fact from The Captive (painting) appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 13 July 2011 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:

Did you know... that the man who bought Sterne's Captive (detail pictured) had John Raphael Smith's engraving plate broken after only 20 prints had been made?

A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2011/July.

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Understandable confusion

I am very confused about which painting is which. (Far too confused to try to fix it myself; I hope the original author will return.) The first paragraph of text says "Captive, from Sterne" (man half reclined) is the 1774 painting, and "Sterne's Captive" (man sitting with back to wall) is the 1778 painting. It also says the later painting ("Sterne's Captive," man sitting with back to wall) is the one of which an engraving with only 20 prints were made.

The image captions contradict that. The dates there say "Captive" (with "from Sterne" implied) is 1778, and "Sterne's Captive" is 1774. The "Did you know" item shows the "Captive, from Sterne" image but titles it "Sterne's Captive," and says it was the one with a 20-copy engraving.

I suppose if you swapped the titles of the images -- put "Sterne's Captive" on top and "Captive, from Sterne" on the bottom, all this would be consistent. (Someone please check that; I'm not sure.) But even then it's confusing to list the paintings in one order (chronological) in the text and display the images in the reverse order top-to-bottom.

I have a few lesser comments. Under history, am I to understand from context that portraits could be imported duty free but non-portrait paintings paid a duty? Was that why the identity and dress of the subject were an issue -- the question was whether he was sitting for a portrait, or merely modeling as a fictional character? If so, might that be clarified? It's a fascinating tax law!

Also, in this passage:

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 was based in 1762 when Britain was at war with France and imprisonment may have been a possibility for a traveller from a hostile country.[2])

would better punctuation be as follows (we need at the least to get the final period/full stop out of the parentheses if it's all part of the same sentence, but maybe we can do better than that).

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 was based in 1762 when Britain was at war with France and imprisonment may have been a possibility for a traveller from a hostile country.[2]

Gms3591 (talk) 09:30, 13 July 2011 (UTC) The original author is around. It is confusing when I was writing it. I'll study your comments but do help yourself Victuallers (talk) 23:17, 13 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]