Boromir Facing Lurtz's Uruk-hai at Amon Hen — Print & Oil Painting

The title names two people and the picture identifies neither of them. The lone figure at the bottom has his back fully turned, a pale hood up, and a long grey-white cloak covering him to the boots. No device, no colour, no badge, nothing but a plain sword held out at the side. The armoured shapes ahead of him are helmed and in shadow. Whoever these are, the painting declines to say.

What it does say is geometry. Seven or eight dark figures are spaced through the depth of the wood, the near ones large and the far ones small, arranged in a loose arc that closes toward the centre, with one heavier figure standing perfectly still at the back while the rest advance. It is less a battle than a diagram of how an ambush is laid.

The wood does most of the work. Slender trunks rise the full height of a tall canvas, light falls through a break in the canopy in soft green-gold columns, and the floor is ferns, a fallen log, wet leaves and a thread of water running across the front.

The beauty of that light is the point and also the trouble. This is the prettiest painting in the group, and something irreversible is about to happen inside it. The painter has refused to signal that with weather, colour or a raised weapon, and the restraint is what makes it land.

The company broke on that hill, and everything that happens for the rest of the book follows from the next few minutes. From our Lord of the Rings collection, next to the instant the horn goes up.