Darth Vader and Jabba the Hutt — Print & Oil Painting

A dim hall lit by two colours that never mix. From the left, a broad shaft of cold blue-white light comes in low across the floor and picks out the tiled paving in a pale wedge. From the right, a warm yellow glow spills from an opening and lays gold along the far wall and the figures standing in it.

Vader stands where the two meet, dead centre, in full black with the cape hanging straight. A red blade is lit in his right hand and carried down and across to the lower left, so that its line runs directly into the blue shaft and stops there. He is the darkest object in a picture that is not otherwise dark.

Jabba occupies the dais behind him at the right: a great mottled bulk with the small arms folded in front, the head low, the eyes half shut. He is painted soft and slightly out of focus, which keeps him back in the room, and he is not reacting to the man standing in front of him.

The court fills every remaining corner: a knot of figures at the left in what look like guard armour, robed shapes on the steps at the right, a droid folded up on the floor near the dais, and two dark heads pushed right up against the picture plane at the bottom corners, out of focus, so that we watch this from inside the crowd.

The staging is a negotiation rather than a fight. One party is seated and enormous and does not move; the other is standing and armed and has come to him. From our Star Wars collection, alongside the Hutt holding court against a very different visitor and the court at its ease.