Colour Sketch for 'And the sea gave up the dead that were in it'

Colour Sketch for 'And the sea gave up the dead that were in it', painted in oil on canvas in 1892 and held at Leighton House, is a preparatory work for one of Leighton's major late compositions depicting the apocalyptic moment from Revelation 20:13 when the sea releases its dead for the Last Judgement. The full-scale finished version of this subject was exhibited at the Royal Academy and was among his most ambitious late works. The subject required Leighton to depict multiple figures rising from the water, creating a complex compositional challenge with no classical precedent he could directly draw on. The colour sketch worked out the primary tonal and compositional organisation before committing to the finished canvas, which would have required extraordinary physical effort given Leighton's declining health in his final years.

The compositional challenge of multiple figures rising from water in a supernatural event required working out figure placement, the tonal contrast between dark water and illuminated human forms, and the implied upward movement that must convey resurrection. The colour sketch establishes these relationships broadly — figure arrangement, tonal organisation, the quality of supernatural light — before the detailed execution of the finished work.