Watts had previously depicted an orange sun above a flat sea in his 1878 work The Genius of Greek Poetry,[21][upper-alpha 3] but the theme and composition of After the Deluge was radically different.[20] The Genius of Greek Poetry was intended to evoke pantheism, with figures representing the forces of nature in human form working and playing, while being watched by the large central figure of the Genius.[21] After the Deluge was explicitly intended as a monotheistic image, evoking both the magnificence and the redemptive mercy of a single all-powerful God engaging in the act of creation.[20]