Color as Feeling

Paul Gauguin

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

1897–98

Oil on canvas, 139.1 × 374.6 cm. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Figures, animals and an idol fill a wide Tahitian landscape. Three questions about human life, written at upper left, give the picture its subject.

• Read from right to left, the scene moves from a baby asleep to an old woman close to death. A philosophical program is set out as the stages of a single life.
• It was first shown at Ambroise Vollard's Paris gallery in late 1898.
• Look for the blue idol at left, which his letters say points to the Beyond.
• Yellow corners make the canvas look like an aged fresco on a wall.
• The museum bought it in 1936 for $80,000.

He painted it in Tahiti during a period of decline and psychological crisis. He then shipped it to Daniel de Monfreid in France, and it was consigned to the dealer.

Image: Wikimedia Commons · PD-Art