The Flood

Regnault's The Flood, exhibited at the 1789 Salon and now at the Louvre, depicts the universal deluge as a scene of human catastrophe — a family struggling against rising waters — rather than the divine narrative of Noah's ark. This secular, humanist approach to biblical subject matter was characteristic of late Enlightenment treatment: the flood as natural disaster rather than divine punishment, its victims ordinary humans rather than the righteous saved and the wicked drowned. The choice resonated with the revolutionary moment — the work appeared at the Salon in the summer of 1789 — lending it an inadvertent symbolic weight. The composition shows a father supporting his elderly parent while trying to save his wife and child, a multi-generational family facing extinction, which invites readings about social bonds, generational duty, and the fragility of human order.

The multiple interacting figures must be simultaneously individualised and united by their shared physical predicament. Regnault achieves this through a compositional system of interlocking bodies — each supporting or being supported by another — that mirrors the physical logic of people caught in floodwater. Warm flesh against dark water creates strong chromatic contrast.