Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?
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Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going? (1897–1898, original French title: D'où venons-nous? Que faisons-nous? Où allons-nous?) is one of Paul Gauguin's most famous paintings. Created in Tahiti, it is currently housed at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Massachusetts, USA.
Provenance and history
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| Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going? |
| Paul Gauguin, 1897–1898 |
| oil on canvas, 139.1 × 374.6 cm |
| Museum of Fine Arts, Boston |
Gauguin left for Tahiti in 1891, looking for a society more elemental and simplistic than that of his native France. In addition to several other paintings that he created which express a highly individualistic mythology, he began this painting in 1897 and finished it by 1898, considering it a masterpiece and grand culmination of his thoughts.
The curators of Boston's Museum of Fine Arts, where the painting now resides, are continuously updating their record of the painting's ownership history, suggesting that their list is not comprehensive. In any case, in 1898, Gauguin sent the painting to Georges Daniel de Monfried in Paris. Subsequently, it was consigned and sold to several other Parisian and European merchants and collectors until it was purchased by the Marie Harriman Gallery in New York in 1936. The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston acquired it from the Marie Harriman Gallery on 16 April 1936.
It is on display at the Museum of Fine Arts (number 36.270) in the Tompkins Collection, part of the Sidney and Esther Rabb Gallery (which displays European art formed from 1870–1900). It is approximately five feet (1.5 m) high and over twelve feet (3.60 m) long.
Style and analysis
Gauguin—after vowing that he would commit suicide following this painting's completion, something he had prior attempted in his life—himself indicated that the painting should be read from right to left, with the three major figure groups illustrating the questions posed in the title. The three women with a child represent the beginning of life; the middle group symbolizes the daily existence of young adulthood; and in the final group, according to the artist, "an old woman approaching death appears reconciled and resigned to her thoughts;" at her feet, "a strange white bird...represents the futility of words." The blue idol in the background apparently represents what Gauguin described as "the Beyond." Of its entirety he said, "I believe that this canvas not only surpasses all my preceding ones, but that I shall never do anything better—or even like it."
The painting is an accentuation of Gauguin's trailblazing postimpressionistic style; his art stressed the vivid use of colors and thick brushstrokes, tenets of the impressionists, while it aimed to convey an emotional or expressionistic strength. It emerged in conjunction with other avant-garde movements of the twentieth century, including cubism and fauvism.