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

Gauguin painted this in Tahiti on rough hemp canvas as his intended final summary. He wrote that he meant to kill himself with arsenic on the cliff above the bay the day he finished. He scrawled the title in the upper-left corner. Read right to left: a newborn (where do we come from?), young people picking fruit (what are we?), an old crone with a strange white bird (where are we going?). His largest painting. He survived the suicide. He died six years later. Now at Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Boston @mfaboston