Arya Stark Perched in a Tree With Needle — Print & Oil Painting

A pale disc sits directly behind the figure and holds the whole composition together. It is drawn as a set of concentric rings, cream and rose at the centre and fading outwards, part moon and part halo, and it is the only geometric shape in a picture otherwise made entirely of crooked branches. Everything reads against it.

The tree does the framing. Black boughs come in from all four corners, twisting and leafless, and she sits in the fork where two of them meet, one boot braced on the lower limb and one knee drawn up. Small red leaves drift across the frame at several depths, and they are the only warm colour on the canvas.

The sword is held upright close to the face, gripped low with the blade rising past the cheek, and it is very thin: a narrow tapering length of steel with a plain ring guard, painted as a needle rather than as a weapon. Just below it, on the branch to the right, a dark bird sits with its wings folded and its head turned towards her.

Needle was forged at Winterfell at her brother's request and it was built for her reach: too slim to hack with, meant for thrusting, and the advice that came with it was to use the pointed end. This painting holds it exactly as somebody who was taught that would. It closes our Game of Thrones collection, alongside another study of Arya with the same blade and the portrait where she raises it beside a wolf.