How does this artwork elucidate its 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.
Hamlet at war with France Laurence Sterne Yorick A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy Bastille