The World Before the Flood is an oil-on-canvas painting by the English artist William Etty, first exhibited in 1828 and currently in the Southampton City Art Gallery. It depicts a scene from John Milton's Paradise Lost in which, among a series of visions of the future shown to Adam, he sees the world immediately before the Great Flood. The painting illustrates the stages of courtship as described by Milton; a group of men select wives from a group of dancing women, drag their chosen woman from the group, and settle down to married life. Behind the courting group, an oncoming storm looms, foreshadowing the destruction which the dancers and lovers are about to bring upon themselves.
When first exhibited at the 1828 Royal Academy Summer Exhibition the painting attracted large crowds, and strongly divided critical opinion. It was greatly praised by many critics, who counted it among the finest works of art in the country. Other reviewers condemned it as crude, tasteless, offensive and poorly executed.
The painting was bought at the Summer Exhibition by the Marquess of Stafford. It was sold in 1908, long after Etty had fallen out of fashion, for a substantial loss, and sold again in 1937 for a further substantial loss to the Southampton City Art Gallery, where it remains. Another work by Etty, sold as A Bacchanalian Scene in 1830 and later renamed Landscape with Figures, was identified in 1953 as a preliminary oil sketch for The World Before the Flood and purchased by the York Art Gallery. The two paintings were exhibited together as part of a major retrospective of Etty's work in 2011–2012.
Background
William Etty was born in 1787, the son of a York baker and miller. On 8 October 1798, at the age of 11, he was apprenticed as a printer to Robert Peck of Hull, publisher of local newspaper the Hull Packet. On completing his seven-year apprenticeship he moved at the age of 18 to London, with the intention of becoming a history painter in the tradition of the Old Masters. Strongly influenced by the works of Titian and Rubens, he submitted paintings to the Royal Academy of Arts and the British Institution, all of which were either rejected or received scant attention when exhibited.
In 1821 the Royal Academy accepted and exhibited one of Etty's works, The Arrival of Cleopatra in Cilicia (also known as The Triumph of Cleopatra). The painting was extremely well received, and many of Etty's fellow artists greatly admired him. He was elected a full Royal Academician in 1828, at that time the most prestigious honour available to an artist. He became well respected for his ability to capture flesh tones accurately, and for his fascination with contrasts in skin tones. In the decade following the exhibition of Cleopatra Etty tried to replicate its success by painting nude figures in biblical, literary and mythological settings.
Although some nudes by foreign artists were held in private English collections, the country had no tradition of depicting unclothed figures and the display and distribution of such material to the public had been suppressed since the 1787 Proclamation for the Discouragement of Vice. Etty was the first British artist to specialise in paintings of nudes, and the reaction of uneducated audiences to these paintings caused concern throughout the 19th century. Many critics condemned his repeated depictions of female nudity as indecent, although his portraits of males in a similar state of undress were generally well received.
Subject
The World Before the Flood illustrates lines 580–597 from Book XI of John Milton's Paradise Lost. Among the visions of the future the Archangel Michael shows to Adam is the world after the expulsion from the Garden of Eden but before the Great Flood. This section of Paradise Lost reflects a passage from the sixth chapter of the Book of Genesis: "That the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose," an act which would shortly cause God to regret creating humanity and to cleanse the earth in the Great Flood.
The painting shows the stages of courtship as described by Milton, as men are seduced by women and pass from enjoying the company of other men into married life. Etty worked through various configurations for the characters in the painting before settling on his final design.