In the 1890s, Gauguin ran away from Paris, family and stock broking career to paint (and bed) native girls in the tropics. Like many a troubled soul, he could not escape so easily from himself, despite great efforts to do so with the help of drinks and opium. At the bottom of his disquiet lay a longing to find what we call the “savage”- primordial man (and woman), humanity in the raw, and elusive ...essence of our kind. The quest eventually drew him to Tahiti and other south sea islands, where traces of pre contact world – an unfallen world, in his eyes – lingered beneath the cross and tricolore.
In 1897, a mail steamer docked at Tahiti bringing terrible news. Gauguin’s favourite child, Aline, had died suddenly from pneumonia. After months of illness, poverty and suicidal despair, the artist harnessed his grief to produce a vast painting – more a mural in conception than a canvas’ – in which, like the Victorian age itself he demanded new answers to the riddle of existence. He wrote the title boldly on the image: three childlike questions, simple yet profound.”D’Ou Venons Nous? Que Sommes Nous? Ou Allons Nous?” Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going? – As sourced from A Short History Of Progress by Ronald Wright. See More