Elendil and Isildur Battle Sauron on Mount Doom — Print & Oil Painting

Almost no colour survives on this slope. The measured saturation is close to the floor for the whole group: the mountainside is grey ash in soft sprayed gradients, the smoke is grey, the armour is grey, and the only chromatic events anywhere are half a dozen streaks of orange lava running down the rock and a single blue plume on a helm.

Three figures make a tall triangle on the incline. At the left and largest, a black armoured shape with a spiked crown swings a heavy spiked mace on a long haft, the arm carried right back at the top of its arc. At the upper right, a warrior in blue and gold with a winged helm comes down at him with both hands on a long weapon. At the bottom centre, nearest to us and painted in white and silver, a third warrior in a horned helm turns in behind a round shield with the sword drawn back.

The handling is unusual for the subject. Soft edges everywhere, no impasto at all, the smoke laid down with a spray so fine that the mountain has no texture whatever. It has the finish of a paperback cover from a particular decade, and the flatness works in its favour: the three armoured figures are the only crisp objects in the picture.

Nobody has been given the advantage. All three are caught mid-movement on ground that is visibly unstable, with fire behind them, and the composition declines to say who is winning.

The two versions of this fight differ in the cast. On the page the enemy is thrown down by two kings, one elf and one man, and both of them die doing it; the man's son cuts the ring from the hand afterwards, using the broken shard of his father's sword. The films put father and son on the mountain together and arm the enemy with a mace, which is where the weapon in this painting comes from. Part of our Lord of the Rings collection, beside the two hosts drawn up before any of it starts and the sword that broke under the father.