Tropical Feast.(Paul Gauguin)

On the south seas island paradise of Tahiti in 1897, French artist Paul Gauguin prepared for death. Suffering from a badly broken leg and boils that were probably caused by syphilis, Gauguin threw himself into painting what he called his "artistic testament": a gigantic canvas that traced humankind from birth to death. He skipped his usual preparatory studies, attacking the work "day and night that whole month in an incredible fever," as he described it. Then he fled to the mountains, swallowed a potent dose of arsenic and waited to die.

He didn't. And once he recovered, he decided to finish the rich-hued, deeply moving "Where Do We Come From? Where Are We? Where Are We Going?" He also executed nine smaller canvases that amplify themes in the panorama, then shipped the whole lot to Paris, where they were put on exhibit and sold individually for paltry sums. Now, to mark the centenary of Gauguin's actual death (in 1903, of an aneurysm at 54), the Grand Palais in Paris is showing "Where Do We Come From...?" and eight of the nine smaller pictures for the first time since the suite was broken up. The collection marks the grand and glorious climax of "Gauguin-Tahiti: Studio of the Tropics," a ravishing exhibit (through Jan. 19, then moving to the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Massachusetts) of 50 paintings and 150 prints, sculptures, woodcuts and manuscripts created during Gauguin's 10 years in the South Seas.

Gauguin's obsession with both Polynesia and painting came late in life. Born in Paris in 1848, he was raised by his widowed mother in Peru, where his paternal half-Peruvian grandmother lived. "You know, I have Indian blood, Inca blood, in me," he later wrote, "and it's reflected in everything I do." At 17, Gauguin joined the French Navy and sailed around the world, encountering many native cultures during the ship's ports of call. In 1872, he married a Danish woman named Mette Gad and they settled in Paris, where he worked as a stockbroker for a decade. All the while, Gauguin collected contemporary art by the impressionists--in particular Renoir, Manet, Pissarro, who later became a friend, and Cezanne, whose primitive style and sweeping colors affected him deeply.

In 1883, at 35, Gauguin abruptly left his wife, his five children and his bourgeois lifestyle to devote himself to art. He traveled to Brittany, where he painted and sculpted, and to Martinique, where he discovered the vibrant beauty of the tropics. Then he moved to Arles, in Provence, where he and his friend Vincent van Gogh painted colorful landscapes and planned their escape to Tahiti, which they imagined as exotic, bountiful and free of stifling European mores. Gauguin visited the Colonial Exhibitions at the Paris Exposition of 1889 and the Musee de l'Homme, where he immersed himself in Polynesian culture.

"Gauguin-Tahiti" opens with a small selection of hand-carved idols, which the curators believe Gauguin studied, as well as two impressive hand-carved linden wood panels that he executed in Brittany. The first, "Be in Love and You Will Be Happy," made in 1889, is a haunting image of an island native terrorized by demons, including Gauguin himself as a monster. The second, "Be Mysterious," is a more serene view ...