After the Deluge

After the Deluge, also known as The Forty-First Day, is a Symbolist oil painting by English artist George Frederic Watts, first exhibited as The Sun in an incomplete form in 1886 and completed in 1891. 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. The painting takes the form of a stylised seascape, dominated by a bright sunburst breaking through clouds. Although this was a theme Watts had depicted previously in The Genius of Greek Poetry in 1878, After the Deluge took a radically different approach. With this painting he intended to evoke a monotheistic God in the act of creation, but avoid depicting the Creator directly. The unfinished painting 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. As Watts did not include After the Deluge in his gift to the nation of what he considered his most significant works, it is not among his better-known paintings. However, 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. Background George Frederic Watts was born in 1817, the son of a London musical instrument manufacturer. His two brothers died in 1823, and his mother in 1826, giving Watts an obsession with death throughout his life. Watts was apprenticed as a sculptor at the age of 10, and by his mid-teens was proficient enough as an artist to be earning a living as a portrait painter. At the age of 18 he gained admission to the Royal Academy schools, although he disliked their methods and his attendance was intermittent. From 1837, Watts was successful enough to devote himself full-time to painting.