The life of Paul Gauguin (1848–1903) is one of the richest and most mythic in the history of Western art. Abandoning a career in banking, a family and his homeland, in the last decade of the nineteenth century he sailed from France to the South Seas to seek a life “in ecstasy, in peace and for art.” During his years in Tahiti, Gauguin brought forth a wealth of astonishing paintings, culminating in this monumental meditation on what he called the “ever-present riddle” of human existence posed in the work’s title. This compact introduction to Gauguin’s masterpiece explores its relation to European models as well as to the artist’s own companion pieces.