Elrond Standing Battle Ready Beneath a Crimson Sky — Print & Oil Painting

The figure is warm and everything around him is cold, and no attempt has been made to blend the two. He is painted in bronze, brass and a tawny gold, standing full length at the centre of the frame; the ground under his boots, the mist at his knees and the whole sky above him are a dark blue-green, and the join between them is abrupt. He looks lit by a different source from the one lighting the landscape.

The armour is where the detail budget has gone. Overlapping scale plates cover the chest and rise into a high collar, shaped pauldrons sit on both shoulders, an embossed leaf pattern runs across the breastplate, and matching greaves are strapped over the shins in interlocking segments. Under the plate hangs a skirt of dark mail and a long tunic. A heavy tan cloak is caught mid air behind him and fills the right third of the picture.

The blade is held low in the right hand, point down and slightly away from the body. It is long, single-edged and gently curved, and it has been given a cold cyan light along its whole length that answers nothing else in the palette. His face is set, the black hair is blown across it, and a fine silver circlet crosses the brow.

What is behind him refuses to resolve. A large angular structure glows red at head height, part gateway and part heraldic shape, and it is flanked by two dark ragged masses that read as wings, or as broken rock, or as smoke. The painter has kept it deliberately unfinished, so it operates as a colour and a threat rather than as a place.

He is one of the very few figures in these books who was actually present at the events everyone else recites from memory. He stood at the last great alliance of his people with men, saw the sword break, and was standing beside the man who took the ring and would not destroy it, and he has been telling that story to visitors ever since. Part of our Lord of the Rings collection, beside the day he never stops describing and the king he served as herald.