To commemorate the anniversary of Captain Cook’s second voyage to Tahiti, this week’s picture is Sir Joshua Reynolds’s portrait of Omai, a South Sea Islander who travelled back to England with the expedition. The work was painted in about 1775 and is privately owned, although negotiations are under way to purchase it for the nation. An anonymous benefactor has offered to contribute much of the reported asking price of £12.5 million, with the intention of donating the picture to Tate Britain. A romantically fascinating relic of the earliest contacts between Western Europeans and the indigenous peoples of the South Seas, Omai would be a welcome addition to the national collections of British art.

The story behind the picture begins in July 1772, when Cook set sail for the Pacific for the second time. The expedition consisted of the Resolution and the Adventure, the former commanded by Cook, the latter by Captain Tobias Furneaux. After a hazardous journey via Cape Horn and Antarctica – where the two ships were temporarily separated by a blizzard – they arrived in Tahiti in August 1773. They stopped there for a few weeks before sailing on to the smaller island of Huaheine. Omai had himself recently arrived on the island, having formerly been a priest in the service of Purea, Queen of Tahiti.  He was one of the first to board the Adventure. Captain Furneaux, noting that Omai “expressed the greatest desire to go to Britannia”, agreed to give him passage. On 17 September they set sail for home.

Battered by storms, the Adventure reached New Zealand at the end of November, casting anchor in Queen Charlotte Sound. As Furneaux set about repairing and provisioning his ship, the natives seemed friendly, supplying the British sailors with fish and “other things of...

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