Darth Maul Overpowers an Aging Qui-Gon Jinn — Print & Oil Painting

The picture is composed as a pin. Qui-Gon is backed against a grey bulkhead at the left with both arms flung up and open, palms empty, elbows above his head, the posture of a man with nothing left between himself and what is in front of him. Maul stands over him at the right with his back almost fully turned to us, a broad dark mass of shoulders and hood with the horns breaking the outline.

Two blades cross the narrow space between them. The green one enters from the upper right at a steep diagonal; the red one comes from a hilt held level at the height of Qui-Gon's chest and runs out to the left across the frame. Neither is doing anything decorative. They are simply where they are.

The face is what the artist has actually painted. Qui-Gon's head is turned out toward the viewer, mouth slightly open, eyes wide and focused on nothing, grey coming through the beard, the long hair loose and falling forward. It is not a heroic expression. It is surprise.

Maul is deliberately denied a face at all. We get the back of the skull, one horn edge catching a cold rim light, and no expression whatsoever, which leaves the entire emotional weight of the image on the man being held against the wall.

The setting is bare industrial metal in blue-grey, unlit and unremarkable: the kind of room a thing like this actually happens in. From our Star Wars collection, alongside the version set in the reactor shaft and Maul in the Theed palace.