Man Picking Fruit from a Tree

Gauguin painted this in 1897, in the village of Punaauia on Tahiti, during the same months he was at work on the huge canvas he treated as his testament, Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going? At the centre of that big picture a figure reaches up to pick fruit, which Gauguin meant as the taking of the fruit of knowledge. Here he gives that single gesture a whole canvas to itself. The forms are flattened and simplified, the greens and yellows warm, with red notes among the leaves and a goat in the foreground. It was a wretched year for him. Word had reached him that his favourite daughter, Aline, had died at 19, he was ill and deep in debt, and soon after finishing the large painting he tried to take his own life.