Portrait of Mai
Who are they? The National Portrait Gallery features the world’s largest portrait collection, and is located in Trafalgar Square, London. Farrer & Co’s involvement: Providing advice to a leading national institution on the joint acquisition of a highly significant and globally recognised work - the Portrait of Mai - the first ever of this value purchased together with an overseas partner.
Background
In 1774, Mai (often known in Britain as Omai) arrived in England, becoming the first Polynesian visitor to Great Britain. His presence attracted intense interest across British society, and he was soon portrayed by Joshua Reynolds, then the leading portrait artist of the age.
Reynolds’s full-length Portrait of Mai was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1776, when the painting was widely admired and later regarded by Reynolds as one of his finest works.
Our work
We advised the National Portrait Gallery, a long-standing client, on its joint purchase of Joshua Reynolds’ Portrait of Mai, with the J. Paul Getty Trust. The £50m acquisition is the most significant in the Gallery’s history and the joint-largest the UK has ever made. It will be displayed by the two institutions periodically.
Why it matters
By enabling a shared acquisition between Getty and the National Portrait Gallery, the arrangement ensures that Portrait of Mai can be seen by audiences on both sides of the Atlantic, while benefiting from joint research, conservation and curatorial expertise. Had the acquisition not been made possible by this structure, then the paining would have been sold overseas, likely to a private collector, and unlikely ever to be seen in the UK again.
Such partnerships require careful legal structuring to balance ownership, responsibility and public access, as well as the interests of those that helped fund the acquisition. The work illustrates how legal frameworks can make ambitious institutional collaboration possible, allowing significant works to be preserved, studied and displayed in ways that may not be achievable by a single UK institution acting alone.
More broadly, the acquisition demonstrates how law continues to play a quiet but essential role in shaping how cultural heritage is cared for and shared today. The result is not only the protection of an important work for the UK, but a model for how institutions can work together in the public interest.
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