THREE MUSEUMS AND GALLERIES JOIN FORCES TO ACQUIRE PARRY's OMAI FOLLOWING SUCCESSFUL FUND-RAISING CAMPAIGN

Portrait of Omai, Joseph Banks and Dr Daniel Solander (c. 1775-6)
By William Parry
59 x 59" (1500 x 1500mm)

The National Portrait Gallery, the Captain Cook Memorial Museum, Whitby, and the National Museums & Galleries of Wales are delighted to announce that they have jointly acquired William Parry's group portrait of Sir Joseph Banks, Dr Daniel Solander and the Tahitian Omai following a successful fund-raising campaign. The portrait, which was generously loaned to the National Portrait Gallery by Nevill Keating Pictures Ltd for the duration of the fund-raising campaign, will be on display in London until 10th August 2003, then at the National Museums and Galleries of Wales from November before being shown at the Captain Cook Memorial Museum in Whitby from April 2004 for several years.

A work of outstanding significance to Britain's heritage and cultural life, the painting was issued with a temporary export bar by the then Arts Minister Baroness Blackstone last year but the foreign buyer eventually withdrew the export application. The portrait was subsequently offered to the consortium at the reduced price of £950,000 and has now been acquired with the help of a generous grant of £155,000 from the National Art Collections Fund and the exceptional generosity of a number of private individuals, trusts and supporters of the three museums. Thanks to a private benefactor and local trusts the Captain Cook Memorial Museum was able to raise half of the total required while London and Cardiff worked together to secure the other half.

Sir Joseph Banks (1743-1820) and the Swedish botanist Dr Daniel Carl Solander (1736-82) were two of eighteenth-century Britain's leading scientists. They were life-long collaborators and had travelled together on Captain Cook's voyage to the South Pacific in 1768. Omai (c.1753-1776/7), who had chosen to travel to Britain after making friends with crew members of the Adventure, was put into Banks and Solander's care after his arrival in 1774. Having studied Tahiti's language and culture, Banks and Solander could communicate with Omai and help ease his transition into European life. Banks was an entrepreneur who understood how to fuel public excitement. He presented Omai to George III, took him to the theatre and the races, and introduced him to aristocratic, intellectual and fashionable society. Combining personal charm and personifying the 'natural man' of Rousseau's writings, Omai had a lasting impact on the popular imagination of eighteenth-century Britain. His engaging character and reputation as a romantic figure was perpetuated in drama, poetry and the memoirs of Samuel Johnson, Fanny Burney, Horace Walpole and others.

Parry's group portrait is the only work to represent the Tahitian as an equal among the company in which he rose to fame. With its scale, composition and grand manner setting, this painting celebrates the collaborative nature of scientific research during the eighteenth century. Painted in an era when Britain was on the brink of considerable colonial, intellectual and commercial expansion, it captures the desire for knowledge of these newly discovered lands and their cultures.

William Parry (l745-l791) was a portrait and history painter. He trained and worked both in London and Italy, while retaining a professional practice in Wales. Parry was the son of John Parry (c. l710-1782), the 'Blind Harpist' who published the earliest collection of traditional Welsh airs. William Parry became a pupil of Reynolds in l766; he was a favourite pupil and clearly had ongoing connections with his influential master. In l770, with the support of Wales' most influential and wealthy patron, Sir Watkin Williams-Wynn, Parry travelled to Italy. He returned in 1775, and shortly afterwards began work on this group portrait possibly as a result of rekindling his acquaintance with Reynolds who was then also painting Omai.

Jacob Simon, Chief Curator at the National Portrait Gallery, said: "It has been a remarkable experience working with two other museums to secure a great historical portrait for the nation in a partnership arrangement which has attracted extraordinarily generous support from trusts and individuals."

Sophie Forgan, Chairman of Trustees, The Captain Cook Memorial Museum, said: "We are delighted to be partners in what has been a tremendous collaborative effort to acquire this painting, and look forward to showing Omai and Banks in Whitby, the town they once visited on their travels in Yorkshire."

Oliver Fairclough, Keeper of Art at the National Museums & Galleries of Wales, said: "This picture is Parry's best-known work. It encapsulates the intellectual excitement of the 1770s, itself strongly felt in Wales, which was soon to transform our national life, and is a wonderful acquisition for a museum whose collections include both the arts and the sciences. We are delighted to have acquired it in partnership with the Captain Cook Memorial Museum and the National Portrait Gallery, enabling it to be seen periodically in Cardiff in the context of works by William Parry and his contemporaries''.

For further press information please contact:

Hazel Sutherland, Press Officer, National Portrait Gallery
Tel 020 7312 2452 fax 020 7 306 0058 email hsutherland@npg.org.uk

Dr Sophie Forgan, Chairman of the Trustees, Captain Cook Memorial Museum, Whitby
Tel 01642 712429 email sophie-forgan@grovehill12.freeserve.co.uk, or at the Museum, tel. 01947 601900, email cookmuseum@tiscali.co.uk

Julie Richards, Press Officer, National Museums & Galleries of Wales. Tel 029 2057 3185 email Julie.Richards@nmgw.ac.uk

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