Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?

Paul Gauguin

Oil on canvas

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Painted in Tahiti during Gauguin's second sojourn in French Polynesia, this monumental oil on canvas—the largest he ever attempted—stretches nearly four metres wide and poses three elemental questions about human existence through a procession of figures set against a lush tropical landscape. Composed to be read from right to left, the painting moves from a sleeping infant and three seated women at the right, through an androgynous central figure reaching for fruit, to a huddled old woman at the left; a blue idol in the background, in Gauguin's own words, "indicates the Beyond." Executed on coarse burlap with deliberately fresco-like yellow corners and smooth paint application, the work synthesises Post-Impressionist colour, Symbolist allegory, and diverse cultural references—Western, Polynesian, and Asian—into a sweeping philosophical statement. Considered by Gauguin himself to be the summation of his artistic thought, it was first exhibited publicly at the Galerie Ambroise Vollard in Paris in 1898 and has been housed at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston since 1936.