Samwise Gamgee carrying Frodo Baggins — Print & Oil Painting

Both of them are barefoot and only one of them is walking. The whole picture is stated in its bottom quarter: one pair of broad, hard, hairy feet driving down into loose grey ash, and another pair hanging above them, turned inward, taking no weight at all.

The load sits high and awkward. The dark-haired one is folded over the other's right shoulder with his face down against the back of the neck and both arms swinging loose. The carrier has one hand clamped around a thigh and the other arm braced across his own chest, and his spine is bent well past what he can hold for long.

The two temperatures are set directly against each other. Both bodies are lit warm, ember orange along the forearms and one side of the face, from a fire that is low and somewhere off to the right. Everything else is cold: grey-blue smoke fills the entire background, with no ground, no sky and no horizon anywhere in it.

The face doing the work is turned up and to the left, mouth open, eyes wide, forehead streaked with grit and a dark line of blood. It is not a heroic expression. It is the face of somebody counting steps.

He had already said he could not carry the thing itself. Then he picked up the man who could. Part of our Lord of the Rings collection, next to the country the two of them crossed to get here.