Picard Standing Before an Alien Cityscape — Print & Oil Painting

The city has been dissolved almost out of existence. Spires, a low dome and a cluster of needle-thin towers float in an orange haze with no hard edge anywhere among them, and a small craft crosses the upper right with a cold blue glow at its stern, the only cool note in the whole background.

Against that the figure is frontal, close, and considerably older than anywhere else in the collection: hollowed under the cheekbones, the skin thin, the eyes steady, the mouth closed. Light arrives from behind and to the left, so the top of the head takes a rose-gold rim while the face itself stays comparatively cool.

This is not a uniform he wore on a bridge. Black body, red shoulders, silver piping down the seams, and a standing collar carrying two gold bars instead of a row of pips, which is flag rank rather than a captaincy.

His right hand lies flat on his chest, and held under the fingers is a small pale delta with a translucent green centre. The later chapters of his life put him behind a desk running an evacuation on a scale nobody had attempted before, and when the Federation cancelled it out from under him he resigned rather than preside over the cancellation. A badge held in the hand rather than pinned to the coat is the correct object for that. From our Star Trek collection, beside An Older Picard's Somber Painted Portrait.