Two striking portraits at the Royal Academy's Exhibition of May 1776 had both been the creations of Sir Joshua Reynolds. One depicted the gorgeous Georgiana Duchess of Devonshire seemingly overburdened in a heavy, ornate dress, apparently steadying herself beside a balustrade in an English country garden, quite possibly Chatsworth. The other figure could not have been further removed from an English country garden, there being a palm tree and a terrain intended to pass as a South Pacific island. Standing there, looking imperious in a toga of white tapa cloth of the aristocracy of the Society Islands is Omai, described as native prince or chief, latterly of Tahiti.
As was common in those days, Georgiana had married the Duke of Devonshire while still of tender years, seventeen years of age. The letters of Fanny Burney, authoress of Evelina, reveal that the tall, muscular Omai, his jet black hair flowing over broad shoulders, with eyes deep-set, alive, as almonds of coal, was acquainted with the Duchess. Omai had become a lion among lions, the most lionised visitor to London, a 'must have' at all the best Society events in London and the Counties. On one occasion, he encountered the Duchess in a London park. So distressed was he by her slovenly appearance that he gave her a short lecture on standards: 'Don't you laugh at her having a lesson of attention from a Tahitian?', wrote Fanny Burney.
Omai's forwardness is that much more remarkable because he was not, as described, a prince or chief in his own country but a commoner. The reason for his being in England can be traced directly to the French philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau's writing on the subject of the bon sauvage, the noble savage. Rousseau insisted that people in their native state enjoyed a better standard and quality of life than Europeans. The Frenchman Louis-Antoine de Bougainville had been the first European to bring a noble savage from the South Pacific to Europe. It proved to be an expensive failure, that much more tragic when the Tahitian died of smallpox on his way home.
The Royal Society's Joseph Banks had an idea that he would like to bring back a native totem from the South Seas on his return to London from Cook's first voyage to Tahiti. 'Thank heaven', wrote Banks, 'I have a sufficiency and I do not know why I may not keep him as a curiosity, as well as my neighbours do lions and tigers'. It came as a great disappointment to the extrovert Banks to have lost his landscape artist to an epileptic fit in the first days ashore on Tahiti. The second blow fell upon his native specimen who died en route to England at Batavia, an unhealthy port in the Dutch East Indies, built upon a swamp.
His appetite insatiable, Banks prepared with demonic intensity for Cook's second voyage but he overplayed his hand and found himself put in his place by the First Lord of the Admiralty, John Montagu, Fourth Earl of Sandwich. He flounced off in high dudgeon, going instead on a hurriedly arranged expedition to Iceland. There is circumstantial evidence to support the view that before sailing northward, Banks gave a commission to Tobias Furneaux, captain of HMS Adventure, consort to Cook's HMS Resolution, to return with a noble savage from the South Pacific. This was the Age of Enlightenment. The chattering classes fed more and more on news of their distant world but they had seen little by way of physical manifestations. Banks intended to capitalise upon their curiosity, particularly since the incredible interest which had followed directly after his return from Cook's first voyage had now fallen into exponential decline.
The week before Omai arrived in England in 1774, Horace Walpole wrote to Sir Horace Mann, his quill dipped in Schadenfreude: 'There is just returned a Mr Bruce, who has lived three years in the Court of Abyssinia and breakfasted every morning with the Maids of Honour on live oxen. Tahiti and Mr Banks are quite forgotten…' Omai had a substantial influence in resurrecting national interest in Banks. Bruce found himself relegated to the ranks of also-rans in comparison to Omai whose status Banks had been obliged to inflate before bringing him out. Furneaux was not the brightest of officers. Omai's family had been middle-class landowners but after losing their land the family forfeited even that status. The word was soon abroad that Omai was a prince. Others said he was a chief, sufficiently important for George III to grant him an audience after only three days in the country.
That Omai became an exceptional success in English Society was due not only to his pragmatism and overweening confidence but also to national characteristics of grace and the skill of mimicry. He copied the behaviour of those he met. The Church quickly recognised Omai's potential to spread the Word among his own heathen people. The proselytising Granville Sharp persuaded John Montagu to permit him to design an English course for Omai. It was not long before the absence of aptitude became evident and Banks whisked his protégé off once more upon the social round. As a consequence of all this, Omai never grasped the basic skills of conversational English.
There can be no greater barometer of the man's success than the number of artists who came forward eager to capture his image. Nathaniel Dance's portrait, of which only engravings remain, is similar to Reynolds' large 1775 portrait except that Omai carries in his left hand a headrest - no ethnographic prop but a symbol of aristocracy, to which he had no entitlement. This exercise had therefore become a masquerade to which Omai had been a willing accomplice, foreshadowing a personal tragedy. The symbolism of the headrest would have eluded the British public but to Omai it was a matter of importance to present himself as he aspired to be.
The life-size Reynolds portrait was not the artist's first attempt to paint Omai, nor, unusually, did it have the benefit of a commission. Reynolds was proud of the portrait, widely acclaimed as being one of his best works and which remained in his studio until after his death. There is a Reynolds pencil head and shoulders drawing in the National Library of Australia, Canberra, thought to be the definitive Omai. Similarly there is a sketch by Reynolds in oils in Yale University Art Gallery a shade short of the Polynesian likeness captured in the pencil drawing.
After two years had elapsed, Banks' interests had so broadened that he no longer had time for Omai. He suggested to George III that the time had come to tell Omai to go home, which the monarch duly did. To James Cook fell the task of dropping Omai off at the Society Island of his choice. Cook's orders were precise. Omai was not to be permitted to return to England. Costs were a consideration but so too was the attention satirists were giving to Omai's 'complaisant' association with identified young wives of the English aristocracy.
Omai was never shy in boasting of his attraction to the ladies. After a visit to the Burneys, now living in the former home of Sir Isaac Newton in St Martin's Street, Leicester Square, perhaps 20 yards from Reynolds' studio, he excused himself saying he had 'to see no less than 12 ladies'. He had also taken an interest in Sir Joshua Reynolds' attractive female model. His time had clearly come but no preparations had been made for his return home. His English experience had so thoroughly spoilt him as to make his successful rehabilitation virtually impossible.
Omai did not help his cause. He arrived home a rich man bearing many gifts from English friends. The native chiefs had rarely seen a horse and treasured those few iron nails which came their way. When Omai the commoner went ashore he rode a stallion and wore a full, bespoke, suit of armour specially made at the Tower of London. He distributed expensive, novel gifts freely among commoner friends and relatives, the likes and quality of which the chiefs had never seen and coveted intensely. En route to the islands Omai collected red feathers - a valuable perquisite of chiefs - in such quantities that he devalued their worth.
Moreover, Omai insulted the Tahitian chief James Cook hoped would take Omai under his wing. The chief heard how he was insignificant compared to George III and the chief's sister whom Cook cultivated as future wife and status enhancer found herself arbitrarily rejected by Omai as being too plain. Cook had no option but to take Omai away from Tahiti to be settled on the nearby island of Huahine. Omai had no social following here, he generated no respect, experienced a fragile existence and failed to court the friendship of those he approached. The arrival of this uninvited, tall poppy in their midst rankled with a people notoriously jealous of success. That his home and property were pillaged were not unexpected consequences for a man who found himself isolated.
Within 30 months of his return home, Omai was dead, falling short of his 30th birthday. Some say he died of a viral infection, others that he was killed for his possessions. He experienced his checkmate where he least expected it, among the home islands he so loved and where he so much wanted to succeed.
So, his remarkable achievement in London had been instrumental in paving the way for his downfall. Somewhere up in the caves in the mountains above the harbour of Fare lie the bones of poor Omai. At the water's edge, precisely on the spot where Cook's carpenters built Omai's home - Beritani or Britain - sits a derelict home of a later period, marking out the spot where the prince who never was lived out his last, sad, lonely days. Today, the house still bears the name Beritani.
What remain as testaments to a remarkable life are the portraits of a remarkable young man. Unfortunately the most notable of all the portraits, Reynolds' real-life portrait and one of the great icons of eighteenth century English art, has not been seen since being sold in 2001 by Simon Howard of Castle Howard for £10.3 million. The owner is believed to be the Irish bloodstock owner John Magnier. Declared a national icon, a predictable export block was placed upon the Reynolds portrait. The consequence of that action has been to lock the famous image of Omai away in a secure area in London.
A philanthropist has come forward to provide £12.5 million for Tate Britain with which to break the impasse. The apparent lack of progress by legal teams appears to indicate that Mr Magnier has no interest in selling his Omai. With a major Joshua Reynolds Exhibition, The Creation of Celebrity, scheduled for May-September 2005, there remains the prospect for the owner to loan Tate Britain the Omai portrait so that it might be enjoyed and appreciated by the public. They do not deserve to be deprived of the opportunity to appreciate a national icon due to a difficulty having arisen between the owner and the State. Only time will tell whether good nature and common sense have prevailed.
[1870]
Richard Connaughton's 'Omai - The Prince Who Never Was'
published by Timewell 31 March 2005

A selection of portraits and pictures available to support this article are:
Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723-92) Omai (1775-76) Oils Private Ownership
Sir Joshua Reynolds Omai (1775-76) Pencil National Library of Australia
Francis Jukes after Cleveley View of Huahine (before) National Library of Australia
Georgina Connaughton View of Huahine (after) -
Unknown Engraver Omai presented to
George III at Kew National Library of Australia
After John Rickman Omai's Public Entry to Tahiti National Library of Australia

The choice is quite wide. There is also, for example, a portrait by John Hamilton Mortimer of a group of five notables including Cook, Banks and Sandwich.