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The World Before the Flood is an oil-on-canvas painting by English artist William Etty, first exhibited in 1828. It depicts a scene from John Milton's Paradise Lost in which Adam sees a vision of 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, take their chosen woman from the group, and settle down to married life. Behind them looms an oncoming storm, 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. Many critics praised it, but others condemned it as crude, tasteless and poorly executed. The painting, currently in the Southampton City Art Gallery, and a preliminary oil sketch for it, now in the York Art Gallery, were exhibited together in a major retrospective of Etty's work in 2011 and 2012. (Full article...)