Weasley Family House — Print & Oil Painting

Red flowers fill the bottom fifth of the frame, thousands of them, thrown so far out of focus that they become a single warm band. You are looking at the house across a garden from about knee height, and that low viewpoint is what makes the building tower.

The Burrow has been given to us in blue: weathered slate-blue boards with red-brown window frames, five or six storeys stacked without any two of them aligned, each narrower and more improbable than the one beneath. A stone chimney runs the full height at the right. Timber props hold up an overhang that has no business staying where it is.

The detail rewards a slow look. A tiny balcony, shutters hanging at an angle, corrugated sheets patched over a roof, a red front door under a sagging porch, a curved-roofed outbuilding at the left with its doors standing open. Every element is plausible on its own, and the sum is a house that only stands because somebody decided it should.

The finish is worth noting. Depth of field, surface grain and lighting all behave like a photograph of a built model rather than a painting, with the trees behind softened and the sky worked as real cloud. It is a curious treatment for a subject this fantastical, and it holds. Part of our Harry Potter collection. For the other house in the story see the castle across the lake, and for the journey between them the train in the Highlands.