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

Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going? is Gauguin's most monumental and philosophically ambitious work, painted in 1897 at Tahiti during a period of profound personal crisis. Nearly four meters wide, it was intended as his artistic testament — he painted it before an attempted suicide, believing it would be his final work. The composition moves from right to left through the three phases of human life implied in the title: birth, maturity, and the approach of death. The blue idol at upper left is a Polynesian religious figure. The Museum of Fine Arts Boston canvas is one of the defining works of Post-Impressionism and of the Symbolist engagement with existential themes.

The monumental horizontal composition unfolds in a frieze-like arrangement across a tropical landscape. Gauguin works with dense, rich color — deep blues and greens of the jungle, warm flesh tones of the figures — applied in broad, flat areas with simplified forms. Multiple figures at different scales create spatial ambiguity. The surface is uneven, worked over an extended period with passages of different density.