Overview
His manners are so extremely graceful ... that you would have thought he came from some foreign court.Novelist Fanny Burney, about 1775
Omai, a young man of Huahine, near Tahiti, so charmed members of James Cook’s second Pacific voyage that they took him home with them. In 1774, he became the first person from the Pacific islands to visit Britain.
The English saw Omai as the very embodiment of the ‘noble savage’ – an ideal associated with French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Omai was presented to royalty and sat for portraits by leading artists of the day. In this print, Omai’s Tahitian clothes take on the appearance of classical Greek robes and holds a Tahitian headrest.
Omai returned to Tahiti in 1776, on Cook’s third voyage, but died soon after.