HUMAN WRONGS WATCH

Human Wrongs Watch 

By John Scales Avery*

15 February 2018 — When he was between the ages of 11 and 16, Paul Gauguin attended a Catholic boarding school in France. At the school, the Bishop of Orléalns himself taught the class in liturgy. The bishop had devised a catechism in which three main questions were asked: “Where does humanity come from? Where is it going? How do we proceed?”

It is possible that these questions influenced Gauguin when, many years later, he began an enormous painting whose title asked very similar questions.

By this time Gauguin had become an influential post-impressionist artist, the leader of the symbolist movement.

Gauguin was admired by a small circle of artists but, like his close friend Vincent van Gogh, he was unrecognized by the larger public until after his death.