Anacreon’s Ode XXX, 'Love Captive', relates how, when captured and bound with flowers by the Muses, Cupid, ‘becoming accustomed to his sweet captivity, preferred servitude to the charms of freedom’, so that even Venus herself was unable to tempt him away from his charming captors. Although undated, Cupid a Captive was probably painted at about the same time as the other three vertical mythological panels by Boucher in The Wallace Collection, c.1754 (cf. Boucher P429, P438 and P444). Together with the three panels, 'Cupid a Captive' was incorporated into a screen and sold at the Prousteau de Montlouis sale in 1851. Its subject, however, does not conform to the Venus imagery of the other three pictures. The handling and composition are different and recent cleaning of the other works has revealed that 'Cupid a Captive' was originally conceived on a slightly larger scale than the other three pictures.