A Monumental 18th-Century Portrait of a Young Polynesian Man—a ‘Supreme Work of Art’—Visits the U.S. for the First Time

The massive “Portrait of Mai” depicts the first Pacific Islander to visit Britain, a young man who became a quasi-celebrity in the 1770s after joining the expedition of explorer James Cook

Sarah Kuta | Daily Correspondent

October 16, 2026 8:00 a.m.

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More than 250 years ago, a young Pacific Islander named Mai made a splash when he arrived in England. He became “a sensation, a star of the press, the darling of the intelligentsia [and] the subject of poems, books, musical plays,” as Hampton Sides wrote in an adapted Smithsonian magazine excerpt of The Exotic: Intrigue and Cultural Ruin in the Age of Imperialism. Joshua Reynolds, a leading portraitist of the day, immortalized Mai’s visit in a massive portrait measuring nearly eight feet tall.

Now, for the first time, the painting has made its way across the Atlantic. It’s on view now at the Getty Museum in Los Angeles, giving art aficionados in America a chance to witness one of Britain’s most significant early portraits of a person of color.

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Mai, also known as Ma‘i or Omai, was a Polynesian man from the island of Raiatea in the South Pacific. After a childhood of hardship, Mai decided to join British explorer James Cook’s second Pacific expedition, aboard the HMS Adventure—a companion ship to the HMS Resolution—under Captain Tobias Furneaux.

After the two ships became separated in a storm in October 1773, Furneaux opted to return to England. When the Adventure sailed into Portsmouth on July 14, 1774, Mai became the first Polynesian to visit Britain.

Joseph Banks, a botanist who had accompanied Cook on his first voyage, became Mai’s patron and chaperone. Over the next two years, Mai became a celebrity of sorts, visiting aristocratic estates, attending concerts and dinner parties, riding horses, hunting and exploring the English countryside. Many Britons assumed he was a Polynesian royal—a misconception Mai did little to correct.

Reynolds is believed to have painted Mai sometime around 1776. He “modeled Mai on ancient Roman senators and military leaders, dressing him in robes reminiscent of Tahitian tapa cloth but with a Roman flair,” Saar Shahar, an English scholar at the University of Southern California, writes for the Conversation. Reynolds depicted the young man barefoot, with a white turban atop his head and intricate tattoos covering his hands.

The artist evidently loved the portrait so much that he kept it in his studio until he died. From there, it passed into the hands of Frederick Howard, 5th Earl of Carlisle, whose family held onto it for roughly 200 years.

In 2001, Irish business magnate and art collector John Magnier reportedly purchased it for $12.4 million. To keep the painting from being sold abroad, the British government imposed an export ban on the portrait in 2022.

The National Portrait Gallery in London tried to raise enough money to buy the painting outright. But, in 2023, the institution ultimately teamed up with the J. Paul Getty Trust to complete the purchase, with each contributing half of the roughly $62 million price tag.

Nicholas Cullinan, then the director of the National Portrait Gallery, told the New York Times’ Alex Marshall at the time that the portrait is a “supreme work of art” that will likely inspire important conversations about European colonialism.

Earlier this year, Davide Gasparotto, senior curator of paintings at the Getty, echoed that sentiment, telling the Los Angeles Times’ Anthony Solorzano that the painting doubles as “an anthropological artifact.”

“It talks about this incredibly important moment of encounter of cultures, sometimes difficult, problematic,” he added.

The unusual joint ownership arrangement for Portrait of Mai means that the painting will travel back and forth between Britain and the United States periodically.

The portrait arrived in California for the first time in July. Conservators from the Getty and the National Portrait Gallery spent weeks studying the painting, ultimately discovering several places where Reynolds had reworked the composition using multiple colors and layers of paint.

“[Reynolds] is notoriously someone that never is satisfied with what he’s done,” Sally Higgs, a conservator for the National Portrait Gallery, told the Los Angeles Times. “And you can really see that in this painting that he just can’t stop—it’s never finished.”

The painting will remain on view at the Getty until March 2027, when the museum is scheduled to close for renovations. It will be transferred to the Getty Villa and will return to the museum in time for the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles.

“Joshua Reynolds’ Portrait of Mai and 18th-Century Portraiture” is on view at the Getty Museum in Los Angeles through March 14, 2027.

Sarah Kuta is a writer and editor based in Longmont, Colorado. She covers history, science, travel, food and beverage, sustainability, economics and other topics.