The captive

A fancy portrait of Miss Ruby Streatfeild with whose family the artist used to stay at Chiddingstone Castle in Kent. She is in oriental costume, and the exotic implications of the title seem out of place with her homely English features. The Art Journal in 1885 noted this picture as ‘interesting as...the first subject painted by [Millais] with the aid of spectacles; in consequence probably it is remarkable for the delicacy of its execution’.