Arts & Culture
Portrait of a nation
Published 06 October 2003
Do we really want Joshua Reynolds's Omai to stay in London? Although treasured as a singularly British painting, this masterpiece hints at seamier aspects of our imperial past, writes Patricia Fara
Great Britain needs great art - or so Benjamin Robert Haydon believed. Haydon successfully urged the government to buy the Elgin marbles in 1816, but condemned the vogue for portraits initiated by Joshua Reynolds. Portraiture, sneered Haydon, is "one of the staple manufactures of the Empire. Wherever the British settle, where they colonise, they carry and will always carry trial by jury, horse racing, and portrait painting." But when Reynolds created Omai, his greatest vision of Empire, he never left the security of his London studio. Instead, his imperial subject did the travelling, bringing to the metropolis a version of the Pacific in which Britons wanted to believe.
Two centuries later, although many modern Britons feel uneasy about keeping the Elgin marbles, other campaigners have tried to prevent Reynolds's Omai from being exported. The owners of Castle Howard are selling this portrait as part of a tax deal, and last December the government gave the Tate Gallery nine months to raise the £12.5m needed to keep Omai in the country. In March, a mystery benefactor stepped in, and, after lengthy negotiations, it appears that the picture will be staying.
Chauvinistic art lovers hate to see any treasured object being sold off to foreign purchasers, and Reynolds's Omai faced stiff competition in the bid to attract funding. But its supporters insist that this is a singularly British painting whose rightful home is London. Stephen Deuchar, director of Tate Britain, regards Omai as Reynolds's masterpiece, an icon of the 18th century. Other enthusiasts claim that this sumptuous portrait evokes the burgeoning spirit of internationalism, when enlightened Britons started to cast a protective mantle over their expanding empire. But such rosy visions of benign paternalism have long been discredited, and the fascination of Reynolds's canvas lies in its ambivalent hints at some of the seamier aspects of imperial exploitation.
The portrait's significance has changed substantially since it was painted. For Reynolds and his contemporaries, Omai was an ambassador from a far-flung race of noble savages. He was about 20 when James Cook landed in Tahiti for the second time, and Omai grasped the opportunity to raise British support for his local political ambitions by sailing back to Portsmouth with him. Joseph Banks, the botanist on Cook's previous voyage, whisked Omai off to London, chattering in pidgin Tahitian. After a few intensive rehearsals, he was dressed up in a velvet coat and satin breeches and presented to George III. Next came smallpox inoculation, in those days a risky procedure. Since Omai's friends had predicted that the Europeans planned to eat him, he was probably alarmed to meet the donor, a woman with "several large pustules on her face". Several weeks later, after Omai had recovered from the inevitable illness, Banks organised a hectic publicity tour for his protege.
Omai became the darling of elite society, feted by celebrities such as Samuel Johnson and the Duchess of Gloucester. He was escorted to Britain's greatest spectacles - theatres, the House of Lords, the University of Cambridge - although it is not always clear who was meant to be entertained during these excursions. Fanny Burney marvelled at Omai's fine clothes and sword, and in her enthusiasm overcompensated by insisting: "He makes remarkable good bows - not for him, but for anybody . . . He eat heartily and committed not the slightest blunder at table." Overriding his protests, she forced him to sing a Tahitian song and then mocked his "savage" music. Dinner party guests amused themselves by laughing indulgently at Omai's fascination with everyday objects such as magnifying glasses and ice, and "admired the savage's good breeding" when he won at chess or backgammon. His accent provided a constant source of hilarity, and - disappointingly - some historians still solicit cheap laughs from Omai's broken English.
Omai's dining companions juggled conflicting views of the Pacific area. The latest scientific theories still assumed that white men lay at the summit of God's creation, and Europeans regarded Pacific islanders as inferior primitives who were dirty, uncivilised and far closer to animals than themselves. But at the same time, they referred to the Pacific region as though it were a new Arcadia, and admired its inhabitants for living in an innocent, uncorrupted state, untainted by the depravity of modern civilisation and unburdened by the necessity of earning their living. Banks remarked that, apart from their complexion, Tahitian women were far superior to the English beauties he had left behind because they were naturally elegant and wore loosely draped clothes like Greek goddesses. He even gave the Tahitian men Greek names, such as Hercules (for his strength) and Epicurus (for his appetite).
Imbued with the preconceptions of his age, Reynolds presented Omai as a noble savage and thus permanently captured ambiguous British attitudes. Omai's flowing white robes, erect posture and classical pose recall a patrician Roman, draped in fabric which is plain yet sculpted into sumptuous folds. Omai seems lost in contemplation as though he had acquired the gift for rational thought so esteemed by Enlightenment gentlemen. Or is he, perhaps, contemplating the beauty of the Pacific island he has left behind, imaginatively idealised by Reynolds in the lush tropical backdrop that stressed the exoticism of a landscape few Europeans had ever seen?
Yet Omai's dark skin and the clearly painted tattoos on his hands also mark him out as a primitive creature. Although he is vigorous and muscular, Reynolds has relegated him to a lower, exotic order by feminising him. His clothes resemble a woman's dress, his face is soft, and his ostentatious hand decorations suggest a feminine attention to appearance. European travellers were fascinated by tattoos, and they brought back detailed pictures showing ornately patterned semi-naked islanders. Omai's body is here discreetly covered, yet his bare inner arm hints at the tattoos swirling over his body. After an impromptu swimming expedition, one boy remarked that "the tawny Priest . . . look'd like a specimen of pale, moving mahogany, highly varnish'd; not only varnish'd, indeed, but curiously veneer'd".
Since Omai was at best semi-literate, we have no first-hand account of his experiences. Judging from the frequent comments on his courtesy, it seems that Omai learnt to conceal his opinions beneath a polite veneer. Whatever his feelings, this experiment in cultural indoctrination ended after a couple of years, when Omai was sent back home with Cook's third expedition. To show how much his European friends cared for him, Omai returned laden down with extravagant gifts, including a custom-made suit of armour from the Tower of London as well as some of the clothes, cutlery and furniture to which he had become accustomed during his stay. Well-meaning philanthropists contributed presents designed to help Omai stun his friends with the latest western technology, such as fireworks, a hand-organ and an electrical machine. Omai's close relatives were overwhelmed with joy on his return: presumably they had given up hope of retrieving him from the foreign invaders. Disregarding Cook's paternalistic advice, Omai distributed his strange acquisitions among his friends, and tried to manipulate the English travellers into helping him liberate the island from some neighbouring invaders.
Even after Omai had been despatched to the other side of the world, hopefully spreading the virtues of British civilisation, he still provided valuable entertainment material in England. Cook was killed in Hawaii, but one of his naval officers published an anonymous account of Omai's glorious return to Tahiti, describing how he paraded round the harbour on a horse, armed with his military gifts as though he were St George setting out to kill the dragon. To accompany this lurid text, an imaginary picture showed Omai firing a gun over the heads of spectators as they flee in horror. He had, it seems, learnt how to behave like a British gentleman.
Patricia Fara's most recent book is Sex, Botany and Empire: the story of Carl Linnaeus and Joseph Banks, published by Icon. She will be lecturing on Omai at Tate Britain on 31 October 2003
Post this article to
We want to encourage people to comment on our content and to exchange views with other readers and hope this will be done on a courteous basis. However, if you encounter posts which are offensive please let us know by emailing comments@newstatesman.co.uk and we will take swift action where necessary.
