The Tahitian Chief Otore (from McGuire Scrapbook)

Alfred Thomas Agate

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Agate executed this portrait probably while he was traveling with the United States South Seas Surveying and Exploring Expedition as an artist and draftsman. The subject, Otore, was a minor Tahitian chief encountered by the party in the South Pacific. The portrait was probably drawn from life in September 1839, when the expedition reached Tahiti, but may have been finished later on board ship. Agate chose a bust-length format for this portrait, relieving the figure with delicate cross-hatching in the background. This was a fairly standard treatment in engraved portraiture; indeed, the inscription on the drawing “for text vignette” confirms that it was intended for illustration, perhaps in Wilkes’s “Narrative of the United States Exploring Expedition” (1845); however, the image was never published.

The American Wing

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The American Wing's ever-evolving collection comprises some 20,000 works of art by African American, Euro American, Latin American, and Native American men and women. Ranging from the colonial to early-modern periods, the holdings include painting, sculpture, works on paper, and decorative arts—including furniture, textiles, ceramics, glass, silver, metalwork, jewelry, basketry, quill and bead embroidery—as well as historical interiors and architectural fragments.

Metropolitan Museum of Art