An Easterling Warrior of Rhûn Armed With a Halberd — Print & Oil Painting

We are underneath him and close, and the low viewpoint is what gives the picture its weight. The figure is cropped at the waist by the bottom edge and leans out over the viewer, so the shoulder plate, the jaw and the polearm all arrive at the eye from below. Nothing in the frame is at rest.

The weapon is drawn with the most care. A long shaft, bound with cord and iron at two points, carries a head that is really three weapons at once: a crescent blade, a back spike and a straight point, all in dark steel with the light running along the edges. It rises the full height of the canvas at a slight angle and cuts the composition in two.

The armour is gold and the face is hidden behind it. A conical helm with a wide brow band and two upswept plates sits low, a mail veil hangs from it across the nose and mouth, and a heavy hoop earring catches the light beside the cheek. Below that, ridged shoulder pieces, a red-brown cloak, a belt with a gold clasp and a second warrior half visible at the right edge in the same equipment.

Behind them the horizon is a city of spikes. Dozens of dark spires and pinnacles rise out of the grey mist in tight rows, red light picking out their bases, and the sky above them is smoke rather than cloud. It is painted flat and cold so that the gold of the armour stays the only warm mass in the picture.

The books tell you almost nothing about how these men looked, so the helm, the veil and the fringed cloak are a costume decision taken by later designers rather than a description followed. What the histories do record is that two of the five wizards sent into the world went east instead of west and were never accounted for in the story that got written down. The whole quarter of the map this soldier comes from is like that: armed, populous and unexplained. Part of our Lord of the Rings collection, next to the mounted arm of the same army hurling burning javelins and the city of that country painted against a low sun.