Daenerys Targaryen's Hair Flows in the Wind — Print & Oil Painting

The background has been scraped rather than painted. Gold, olive and dirty cream are dragged across the whole width of the canvas with something flat, and inside those drags a few straight scratches suggest an arch, a column, possibly a window, none of it resolving into a building. It is a wall of paint standing in for a place.

The hair carries the figure into that wall. It lifts away to the left in long lit ribbons, and at their ends the artist stops drawing them and lets the strands run into the gold ground until the two are the same substance. On the right side, where the light is weaker, the same hair simply disappears into the dark of the shoulder.

The gown underneath is nearly black. A deep V at the neck closed with a small dark clasp, panels of navy so low in value that the folds have to be found, and at each shoulder a mass of feathered fringe that breaks the silhouette into soft points. Only the collarbone and the top of the chest are lit, which pulls the eye straight back up to the face.

What is remarkable is how little the picture gives you. No dragon, no fire, no crown, no throne, none of the machinery that usually identifies this character: a face, a quantity of moving hair, and enough of a dress to suggest a court. It still works. Filed in our Game of Thrones collection, near the reclining portrait by candlelight, another study with the spectacle removed.