June 20, 2023
Saving Omai: A £50 Million Reynolds Masterpiece Stays on Public View
One of the most arresting portraits in British art — Joshua Reynolds's life-size 'Portrait of Mai (Omai)' — was secured for public display in a landmark £50 million deal.
Painted around 1776, Joshua Reynolds's full-length portrait of Mai — a young man from the Pacific island of Ra'iātea who travelled to Georgian London — is a picture of extraordinary poise and complexity. For years it risked vanishing into private hands abroad.
Its future was settled when the National Portrait Gallery and the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles agreed to acquire it jointly for around £50 million, sharing the work between London and California so it remains on public view rather than locked away.
The 'Portrait of Omai' took pride of place as the reborn National Portrait Gallery reopened in 2023 — a painting that asks hard, modern questions about empire, encounter and identity, now kept where everyone can stand before it and think.
Image: “Joshua Reynolds - Portrait of Omai” — Joshua Reynolds, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.