It keeps pouring down with rain so what better way to while away the grey day than to watch, in all its glorious colours, Paradise Found, a dramatisation of the life of Paul Gauguin, the French painter who in 1891, at the age of 43, went to live in French Polynesia. He returned one more time to France but left again for Tahiti in 1895, never to return. He died in the Marquesas Islands in 1903.
Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?
This is perhaps his most famous painting which he inscribed in the upper left corner D'où Venons Nous / Que Sommes Nous / Où Allons Nous with no question mark, no dash, and all words capitalized.
Gauguin — after vowing that he would commit suicide following this painting's completion, something he had previously attempted — 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."
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