Omai A Beach

Omai A Beach depicts Mai (known as Omai), a Polynesian man from Ra'iatea who accompanied Captain James Cook's second voyage to England in 1774 and became a celebrated figure in London society. De Loutherbourg, who moved in the same artistic and intellectual circles as the botanist Joseph Banks who had accompanied Cook's first voyage, was well positioned to paint this unusual subject. Mai was fêted by London society, sat for multiple portraits including a celebrated image by Joshua Reynolds, and became a living embodiment of Rousseauvian ideas about the 'noble savage' that fascinated Enlightenment-era European intellectuals.

The beach setting combines de Loutherbourg's landscape capabilities with portraiture — a figure in exotic dress against a seashore backdrop. Coastal light and sand palette differs from his European Sublime subjects, with warmer tones and more open sky.