Ned Stark's Face Framed by Autumn Leaves — Print & Oil Painting

Leaves hang in front of the picture rather than in it. Half a dozen scarlet ones are suspended at different distances between the viewer and the face, the nearest large and slightly out of focus at the top edge, the furthest small and sharp beside the jaw, and together they work as a loose screen the eye has to look past to get to the man.

The light comes cool from the left and is completely uncompromising. It runs down the forehead, along the bridge of the nose and over one cheekbone in a hard pale band, leaves the far side of the face in green-brown shadow, and picks out a single wet highlight in the near eye. Below that everything softens: the beard, the fur at the shoulder, the woodland behind.

The costume is described in three or four notes and no more. A dark fur collar, a strap crossing the chest, a brass fitting at the shoulder and a worn leather bracer at the bottom of the frame, all of it kept in shadow so that nothing competes with the head. The forest behind resolves into a red canopy and a trunk and then stops trying.

This is a darker-haired reading of the character than the television series settled on, and it is closer to the books for it: Eddard Stark is described on the page as dark-haired and long-faced, a Stark by colouring as much as by name. Part of our Game of Thrones collection, opposite the full-length figure beside a tree of red leaves.