Omai’s Portrait Arrives at the Getty: The Journey of an 18th‑Century Pacific Icon

On September 15, 2026 the Getty Center opened its doors to a work that has never before been seen on American soil – Joshua Reynolds’s near‑eight‑foot portrait of a young Pacific Islander known in England as Omai. The canvas, painted in 1776, is as striking today as it was in the day it first hung on a London wall.

Omai’s story begins in 1774, when a man in his early twenties stepped off the decks of Captain James Cook’s second Pacific expedition and onto English soil. He was the first native of the Society Islands – the cluster of islands that includes modern‑day Tahiti and Raiatea – ever to set foot in Britain. The voyage had been part of Cook’s larger effort to map the South Pacific, and Omai was one of several islanders taken aboard as curiosities for European scientists.

Two years after his arrival, Reynolds, who was then president of the fledgling Royal Academy, decided to give this newcomer a treatment usually reserved for aristocracy. He painted Omai on a canvas that stretches nearly eight feet tall, dressing him in a sumptuous crimson robe, positioning him against a classical backdrop, and bestowing upon him a dignified, almost regal stare. The result was a bold statement: a “savage” could be rendered with the same gravitas as a duke.

Fast‑forward 250 years and the painting has travelled half‑way across the world. In 2023 the Getty Center teamed up with London’s National Portrait Gallery to buy the work for a reported US$61 million. After a brief period of conservation, it now occupies a prominent gallery in Los Angeles, where it will be on view until March 2027.

For most visitors today the impact is immediate and visceral. It is hard to imagine 18th‑century Britons staring at a portrait of a dark‑skinned teenager and feeling the same mix of fascination, discomfort, and exotic wonder that Reynolds likely intended. The painting acted as a mirror, reflecting back the hopes and anxieties of a nation eager to catalogue the world beyond its shores.

The intellectual climate of the era helps explain why Omai captured the public imagination. Translations of Jean‑Jacques Rousseau’s essays were flooding England by the late 1750s, popularising the notion that “savages” lived in a state of noble simplicity, untouched by the corrupting influence of agriculture and industry. Rousseau urged gentlemen to embark on a serious “Voyage round the world” to study such peoples. Wealthy naturalists like Joseph Banks eagerly answered that call, financing Cook’s voyages and bringing back not just specimens, but stories.

Banks’s own adventures were legendary. On Cook’s first voyage (1768‑71) he catalogued countless plants and animals, and befriended a priest‑navigator from Raiatea named Tupaia. Tupaia hoped to travel to England, but tragically died on the return trip. When Cook set sail again in 1772, Banks stayed ashore, but another chance arose: Omai, a displaced refugee from Raiatea, was taken aboard the Adventure, Cook’s consort ship, under the command of Captain Tobias Furneaux.

Omai’s personal motives were as pragmatic as they were adventurous. His father had been killed in a war with neighbouring Bora Bora, and the young man hoped that exposure to British weaponry might one day help him reclaim his homeland. On board he earned the nickname “Jack” from the crew, proving himself useful at the rigging and even charming the officers.

Furneaux recognised that a simple “islander” would not make a splash in London’s salons. He began to dress Omai in the finery of a “priest of the sun,” and when the ship docked at the Cape of Good Hope, he introduced the young man to the “best companies” of the colonial elite. Omai himself started to claim a higher rank, referring to himself as a “hòa” – an attendant to a king – rather than a low‑born “towtòw.”

By the time Omai set foot in England, a fever for all things Tahitian was already raging. A bestselling compilation of Pacific travelogues had just hit the market, portraying Tahiti as a kind of Eden, a “New Cythera” where love and leisure reigned. Joseph Banks, ever the patron of curiosities, seized the moment to showcase Omai as a living embodiment of that paradise, introducing him at soirées, theatres, and scientific gatherings.

The reception was mixed. While many praised the exotic charm of the newcomer, others – notably the writer Samuel Johnson – used Omai as a foil to argue against the value of costly voyages of discovery. Their debates reveal how the portrait operated as a battleground for ideas about empire, science, and the morality of “civilising” missions.

Today, Reynolds’s canvas serves as a complicated relic. It tells a story of artistic ambition, colonial curiosity, and the ways in which a single individual could be reshaped to fit the expectations of a foreign audience. Seeing Omai eye‑to‑eye, framed by the soft Californian light of the Getty, invites us to ask what other portraits of the past remain unseen, and how they might still shape our view of the world.

Visitors to the Getty can expect more than just a painting; they encounter a narrative that spans oceans, centuries, and cultures. The portrait of Omai stands as a reminder that history is often a collage of perspectives – some noble, some problematic, all worth looking at closely.