After the Deluge (painting)
After the Deluge, also known as The Forty-First Day, is a Symbolist oil painting by English artist George Frederic Watts. It shows a scene from the story of Noah’s Flood, in which after 40 days of rain Noah opens the window of his Ark to see that the rain has stopped. The painting takes the form of a stylised seascape, dominated by a bright sunburst breaking through clouds.
About After the Deluge (painting) in brief
After the Deluge, also known as The Forty-First Day, is a Symbolist oil painting by English artist George Frederic Watts. It shows a scene from the story of Noah’s Flood, in which after 40 days of rain Noah opens the window of his Ark to see that the rain has stopped. Watts felt that modern society was in decline owing to a lack of moral values, and he often painted works on the topic of the Flood and its cleansing of the unworthy from the world. With this painting he intended to evoke a monotheistic God in the act of creation, but avoid depicting the Creator directly. The painting takes the form of a stylised seascape, dominated by a bright sunburst breaking through clouds. It was exhibited in Whitechapel in 1886, under the intentionally simplified title of The Sun. Watts worked on the painting for a further five years, and the completed version was exhibited for the first time at the New Gallery in 1891. Between 1902 and 1906 the painting was exhibited around the United Kingdom, and it is now in the collection of the Watts Gallery in Compton, Surrey.
It is not among his better-known paintings, but it was greatly admired by many of Watts’s fellow artists, and has been cited as an influence on numerous other painters who worked in the two decades following its initial exhibition. Above, Watts’s composition echoes J. M. W. Turner’s treatment of the same topic, The Morning after the Delug—Moses, Light and Colour — in the Book of Genesis, primarily depicting a bright circle of light in the sky. Below, the painting depicts a circle of bright light of the sea, with the light of clouds surrounding the sun illuminating the sea surrounding the clouds and the sun surrounding the sea. Watts chose to depict the moment at which the sunlight became visible for the. first time, after 40. days obscured by clouds. And the waters decreased continually until the tenth month, when the tops of the mountains were seen to pass at the end of the month.
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