D'ou Venons Nous / Que Sommes Nous / Où Allons Nous
Three Questions
Paul Gauguin · 1897 to 1898
01
Tahiti. 1897.
Nearly four metres of canvas.
His daughter Aline has died that year.
02
Top left, he paints the title.
D'ou Venons Nous.
Que Sommes Nous.
Où Allons Nous.
Three questions. Not one question mark.
03
Read it right to left, he wrote.
Like a sacred scroll.
It begins with a sleeping baby.
04
Further left, an idol.
He lists it in his own key to the picture.
05
It ends at the far left.
An old woman, crouching.
Close to death.
Right to left.
Birth to death.
“I shall never do anything better or even like it.”
1898
He told Monfreid he took arsenic once it was done.
He survived. Some historians doubt it happened.
That year he shipped the canvas to Paris.
Boston bought it in 1936.
Paul Gauguin
French · Post-Impressionism · 1848 to 1903
Sources · 4