Kate Fullagar | The Modern Saga and Forgotten History of Reynolds’ Mai Portrait

This event will be held both on-campus and online

In March 2023 the longstanding battle for ownership of Joshua Reynolds’ Portrait of Mai (1775) was resolved. After more than two decades of struggle to retain the work in public British hands for its “historical significance [as a] national treasure”, it was bought by a consortium of art foundations including the National Portrait Gallery and the Getty Trust. It will now spend equal time in London and Los Angeles, securing reasonable access to the work yet marring original efforts to keep it solely in Britain. The purchase price of £50 million was by far the highest paid for a British work of art, the result of ever-rising hype around the work since its sale in 2001 to a private buyer for £10.3 million.

This paper will work backwards through this saga, starting with the recent purchase and explaining the preceding twenty years of effort to secure it. Kate will then discuss the painting’s reputation in the nineteenth century, its reception in the eighteenth century, and finally how the work came into existence in the first place. Throughout she will focus on the absent centre of Mai and his Pacific world. 

Please note, as part of her Dobell fellowship, Kate will be convening a workshop on 17-18 October at ANU on “British art, Pacific subjects, Contemporary values: The Modern Saga and Forgotten History of Reynolds’ Mai Portrait,” with a keynote by Associate Professor Peter Brunt. All welcome!

Kate Fullagar FAHA is Professor of History in the Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences, Australian Catholic University, and, in 2024, Sir William Dobell Visiting Chair in Art History at ANU. Her books include The Savage Visit (2012), The Warrior, the Voyager, and the Artist (2020), and Bennelong & Phillip (2023). She is also editor of The Atlantic World in the Antipodes (2012) and Facing Empire (2018). She is Vice President of the Australian Historical Association.

Image: Joshua Reynolds's' Mai Portrait (1775), presently at the National Portrait Gallery, London, 2024.

This event will be held both on-campus and online via Zoom (a link to the online stream will be sent to registered attendees).

The School of Art & Design Seminar series will continue weekly on Tuesdays from 1-2pm, between 16 July and 29 October 2024. 

The School of Art & Design Seminar Series is co-convened by Dr Alex Burchmore, Alia Parker, and Elisa Crossing.