A little homestall

• Published in: TLS, the Times Literary Supplement no. 6286; p. 1
• Main Author: Darcy, Jane
• Format: Trade Publication Article
• Language: English
• Published: London TES Global Limited 22-09-2023
• Subjects: Painters; Poetry; Portraits
• ISSN: 0307-661X; 2517-7729

It was announced earlier this year that the National Portrait Gallery and the J. Paul Getty Museum had jointly acquired Joshua Reynolds's magnificent "Portrait of Mai (Omai)" -- an idealized image of the young Polynesian who traveled to London in the 1770s. There had only been one such visit before Mai's, that of Ahutoru, a Tahitian, to Paris a few years earlier. Contemporary accounts of Omai as a lionized figure in eighteenth-century London are sparse. There is the lovely anecdote about his meeting George III. But there seems nothing more significant or challenging to the narrative of an overwhelmingly positive cultural encounter. A new light is cast on Reynolds's painting if we consider it alongside a poetic description of Omai by William Cowper, written in 1785. Cowper, although famously reclusive, was an avid newspaper reader, and his work addressed topics ranging from the American war to hunting, education, enclosure and earthquakes. Cowper was also Jane Austen's favorite poet. It is not generally known that Austen cherished Cowper's portrait of Omai.