The Lonely Mountain Glimpsed Over a Misty Forest — Print & Oil Painting

The mountain occupies roughly one hundredth of this canvas. It sits on the horizon slightly left of centre as a small pale wedge with a white cap, no taller than a fingertip, and the remaining ninety-nine hundredths are the distance between the viewer and it. Naming the work after it is almost a joke.

The sky takes two thirds of the surface and is handled entirely in horizontal bands blended wet into wet: a dusty rose at the top left with a few streaked clouds in it, then a broad clean blue, then cream, then a warm gold sitting directly on the horizon. There are no hard edges anywhere in it.

Between the sky and the trees lies a wide belt of blue-grey haze that contains no drawn information at all. It could be plain, water or low cloud; the painter has declined to say, and that refusal is what pushes the mountain as far back as it goes.

Only the bottom band is given detail, and even that is restrained: a dark green forest running the full width, its canopy broken by two or three olive clearings and a thin pale line of river, with a few individual crowns catching light along the top edge. It is the only part of the picture in focus and it is the part furthest from the subject.

Painting a landmark as a rumour on the horizon is the honest way to show what it is for most of the journey toward it. Part of our Lord of the Rings collection, alongside the same peak brought within arm's reach and the signpost that points this way.