Early in 1891, Gauguin left for Tahiti, where he began a series of paintings that depict the physical beauty of the people and the myths underlying their traditional religion. The series evokes the Tahitian cycle of existence from birth through maturity to old age and death. Gauguin visited France for the last time in 1893-95, then returned to Tahiti.
Plagued increasingly by ill health and poverty, he attempted suicide in 1898 after completing, by way of a last testament to his vision of Tahiti, Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going? (1897-98; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston). The paintings of his final years project an idealized vision of native life, removed from both time and actuality in its conception of the physical and spiritual dimensions of Tahitian culture.
from www.discoverfrance.net
"Silence? I am learning to know the silence of a Tahitian night.... The rays of the moon play through the bamboo reeds.... Between me and the sky there was nothing except the high frail roof of pandanus leaves, where the lizards have their nests.''
Paul Gauguin, from his Tahitian Journal
