Will Omai be split between London and Los Angeles?

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4/4/23 - Acquisition project - London, National Portrait Gallery and Los Angeles, The J. Paul Getty Museum - Omai was a traveller, coming to England from Polynesia at the age of 22 in 1774, and remaining in London until 1776, frequenting British high society. The paintings depicting him are obviously also destined to move around a lot. In 2002, the one painted by William Parry, in which he is seen in the company of Joseph Banks and Dr Daniel Solander, was bought by no less than three museums (see news item 30/1/05): the National Portrait Gallery in London, the Captain Cook Memorial Museum in Whitby, and the National Museums & Galleries in Wales, Cardiff. The work has since (assuming the original intentions were followed, which we have not been able to verify) been moved regularly between the UK capital, Yorkshire and Wales...


Joshua Reynolds (1723-1792)
Portrait of Omai, c. 1776
Oil on canvas - 236 x 145.5 cm
John Magnier Collection
Photo: Wikimedia (public domain)
See the image in its page

Far more famous and important, Joshua Reynolds’ portrait of Omai has been making headlines in England for nearly two decades, its owner having sought to sell it at one time, when it was estimated to be worth £12.5 million. A temporary export ban was placed on the painting to allow the Tate Gallery to acquire it (see the news item of 25/5/05), but its owner gave up trying to sell it and long-term loaned it with the National Gallery of Ireland until 2012 (see the news item of 17/1/06).
It is no longer the Tate Gallery that is in the running to buy it, but the National Portrait Gallery. And the price is no longer 12.5 million pounds, but 50 million. This is a very high amount requested by the work’s owner, Irish billionaire John Magnier, and confirmed by the independent expert Anthony Mould, who was consulted by the British government. It should be remembered that it sold for ’only’ £10.3 million at auction in 2001 and that other paintings by Reynolds do not exceed £4 or £5 million at best. But it is a genuine masterpiece and, above all, a representative of ’diversity’, which nowadays, especially in Anglo-Saxon countries, changes everything.
Despite its desire to acquire the painting, the London museum was only able to raise less than half of the sum due to a lack of state support. It therefore approached the Getty Museum, which agreed to buy it jointly, using, according to the press release, a "new model of international collaboration". In reality, this is nothing new, since shared ownership between two museums in different countries already exists, if only between the Louvre and the Rijksmuseum for the two Rembrandt portraits formerly in the Rothschild collection. Let us also recall the example of Canova’s Three Graces acquired jointly by the Victoria & Albert Museum in London and the National Gallery of Scotland, even though Scotland is still in the United Kingdom.

We have written before, and will no doubt write often in the future, that this type of arrangement is detrimental to the conservation of paintings (and probably even more so of sculptures), involving frequent and unnecessary travel for major works.
The deadline for raising the 50 million has been extended by three months to 10 June. If the National Portrait Gallery manages to raise the £25 million by that date (it appears to be only £1 million short), the painting can be bought by both museums. Unless the National Heritage Memorial Fund, whose aim is to save national treasures in England, and which is giving £10 million for this acquisition, is not satisfied with such a solution, as envisaged in an article in the Financial Times.

It is therefore still too early to talk about a joint purchase by the National Portrait Gallery and the Getty: if a contribution (which seems unlikely) of £25 million were to supplement the amount raised by the English museum, the painting could remain in London. If the museum fails to raise the first £25 million (which seems almost as unlikely), the painting will go abroad.
If, as is almost certain, the two museums were to buy it together, the work would first be shown in London for the reopening of the National Portrait Gallery on 22 June 2023, and then leave for Los Angeles for the 2028 (!) Olympics. So every five years the painting would travel the almost 9,000 kilometres between the two cities...

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