Oil painting, 'The Captive', Johann Georg Volmar

In a cave a brigand armed with a sword and a pistol takes aim at an enemy, invisible beyond the entrance. Behind him, his female prisoner, wearing fashionable attire, sits with averted eyes and her hands clasped on a handkerchief on her lap.

Bequeathed by Rev. Chauncey Hare Townshend

Rev. C. H. Townshend. Listed in the 1868 post-mortem register of the contents of Townshend's London house (V&A R/F MA/1/T1181) in the library as by G. Volmar; Bequeathed by Rev. Chauncey Hare Townshend, 1868.

Ref : Parkinson, Ronald, Catalogue of British Oil Paintings 1820-1860. Victoria & Albert Museum, HMSO, London, 1990. p.xix.

'Chauncy Hare Townshend (1798-1868) was born into a wealthy family, only son of Henry Hare Townsend of Busbridge Hall, Godalming, Surrey. Educated at Eton and Trinity Hall, Cambridge (BA 1821). Succeeded to the family estates 1827, when he added 'h' to the Townsend name. He had taken holy orders, but while he always referred to himself as 'Rev.' on the title pages of his books, he never practised his vocation... . Very much a dilettante in the eighteenth-century sense, he moved in the highest social and literary circles; a great friend of Charles Dickens (he was the dedicatee of Great Expectations) with whom he shared a fascination of mesmerism... Bulwer Lytton described his life's 'Beau-deal of happiness' as 'elegant rest, travel, lots of money - and he is always ill and melancholy'. Of the many watercolours and British and continental oil paintings he bequeathed to the V&A, the majority are landscapes. He is the first identifiable British collector of early photographs apart from the Prince Consort, particularly landscape photography, and also collected gems and geological specimens.'

Historical significance: Paintings of brigands ('Banditti' in Italian) were widely popular throughout Europe during the eighteenth century and the first half of the nineteenth century. Such images are often ambivalent in character, depicting their subjects by turns as criminals preying on innocent victims or as brave and romantic outsiders marginalised by the forces of officialdom. Here, the flamboyant costume and especially the hair-net of the back-turned figure, of the type known in Spanish as a 'redecilla' or 'castañeta', and still worn by matadors, indicates that the brigands are Spanish, suggesting that the event may be set during the Peninsula War. This is one of a pair of paintings, with V&A 1547-1869.

Johann Georg Volmar (1770-1831) was born in Mengen (Württemberg), a member of a family of painters. He came early to Zurich, where he worked for Lavater. In 1789 he was in Lausanne working as a miniaturist, and a year later he moved to Bern, where he became a professor at the School of Art. He painted mainly history and costume pieces and battle scenes, and is represented by four works in the Kunstmuseum, Bern.

1548-1869