Joshua Reynolds’ Portrait of Omai acquired by National Portrait Gallery

The NPG had launched a last-ditch bid to raise £50m to prevent Portrait of Omai going to private hands.
Photograph: Alamy

A painting described as “one of the most important, influential portraits in the history of British art” is to remain on public display after it was jointly bought by the UK’s National Portrait Gallery and the J Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles.

Joshua Reynolds’ 7ft high 1774 portrait of the first Polynesian man to visit Britain is both spiritually breathtaking and, as the country’s first grand portrayal of a non-white subject, culturally important.