Riders Approaching Edoras Beneath Snowy Peaks — Print & Oil Painting

Nothing in this painting is blended. Every element has been laid down as a flat slab of colour with a hard edge, one pass of a broad tool and no second visit: the sky is four or five bands of blue, a mountain face is three tones and a highlight, a thatched roof is a single stroke. Held at arm's length it resolves completely; up close it is a mosaic of rectangles.

The town is stacked rather than spread. A brown rock rises out of the plain, a hall with a bright golden roof sits alone at the summit, and below it the buildings step down the shoulder in tiers of dark thatch, the whole hill ringed at its foot by a timber palisade drawn as a row of upright ticks. It reads as one continuous structure from ground to crest.

Three riders occupy the lower left, painted with fewer strokes than anything else in the frame. They are grouped close together on a golden slope, small enough that their horses are single dark marks, and they are looking toward the hill rather than moving across the picture.

Colour is split down the middle of the temperature range. The plain is hot ochre and burnt orange laid on thickly; the peaks behind are cold white and violet-blue; the sky is a flat unmodulated blue with no cloud in it at all. Nothing bridges the two, and the town sits precisely on the seam.

A capital that is a fortified hill with a hall on top, and no second city anywhere in the country, tells you most of what you need to know about how this kingdom works. From our Lord of the Rings collection, alongside three more riders coming up the same valley and the same hill seen with a road full of people.