Joseph Vorst foregrounded the destructive potential of nature in After the Flood. During the 1940s, he created several paintings representing the devastation caused by two major floods in Arkansas history: the flooding of the Mississippi Valley in 1927 and the 1937 winter flood of the Ohio-Mississippi Valley. Portraying an African American family in a bleak landscape, he drew attention to the hardship caused by natural disaster. The flooding was especially difficult for tenant farmers and sharecroppers, who were struggling from the effects of drought before floodwaters spread into their homes.