Unique deal struck to acquire The Portrait of Omai

A section of The Portrait of Omai by Sir Joshua Reynolds c.1776

(Image credit: Pictorial Press Ltd/Alamy Stock Photo )

published 6 April 2023

The future of Sir Joshua Reynolds’ The Portrait of Omai has been secured thanks to a unique deal between London’s National Portrait Gallery and the Getty Museum in Los Angeles. Depicting a Polynesian who sailed to Britain with Captain Cook, the c.1776 work is one of the earliest great portraits of a person of colour, but was under threat of disappearing into a private collection after an export bar expired. Under the deal, each museum will pay half of the portrait’s £50m price tag and it will be shown alternately in LA and London. It could be on display in London as soon as June, when the Portrait Gallery reopens after a three-year makeover.

Oldest killer whale in captivity to return to native waters

More than 50 years after being captured in Puget Sound, off Washington State, the oldest killer whale in captivity is to be returned to her native waters. Lolita, 56, spent decades as the star attraction at the Miami Seaquarium, where she was held in the smallest orca enclosure in the US. But following years of lobbying by animal welfare activists, the aquarium has promised to send the orca back to Puget Sound – where her mother, 95, still swims – within two years.

The funeral of one of the RAF’s last black Second World War veterans has had to be rearranged, because so many people want to attend. Flt. Sgt. Peter Brown, who served at RAF Scampton, died in west London aged 96. His funeral was due to be held in a 140-seat chapel last week, but when his friends started an appeal to find any surviving relatives, it generated such a huge response from the public, the service had to be moved. Westminster Council is now working with the RAF and the MoD to ensure that he has the “send-off he deserves”.