Episode 1917
The World Before the Flood
Thu, 2022-Aug-04 00:04 UTC
Length - 2:28
Direct Link
Welcome to featured Wiki of the Day where we read the summary of the featured Wikipedia article every day.
The featured article for Thursday, 4 August 2022 is The World Before the Flood.
The World Before the Flood is an oil painting on canvas by 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, a symbol of 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.
This recording reflects the Wikipedia text as of 00:04 UTC on Thursday, 4 August 2022.
For the full current version of the article, see The World Before the Flood on Wikipedia.
This podcast is produced by Abulsme Productions based on Wikipedia content and is released under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.
Visit wikioftheday.com for our archives, sister podcasts, and swag. Please subscribe to never miss an episode. You can also follow @WotDpod on Twitter.
Abulsme Productions produces the current events podcast Curmudgeon's Corner as well. Check it out in your podcast player of choice.
This has been Kevin Neural. Thank you for listening to featured Wiki of the Day.
|
|
Buy WotD Stuff!!
