Darth Vader Striking Down a Rebel Soldier in the Corridor — Print & Oil Painting

The camera has been put on the floor, which changes who this picture is about. We are at the height of the man lying in the lower left corner, and everything else in the frame is above us.

That man is the most carefully painted thing here. He is on his back in a padded open-faced helmet, one gloved hand thrown up, the head tipped back and the mouth wide open. His face is worked in warm ochre and orange while the rest of the canvas stays grey and smoke-filled, and it is the only place in the image where an expression is visible.

Above him Vader has the blade up and across on a steep diagonal, and a bolt has just landed on it, throwing a white star of sparks at the point of contact, with the deflection thrown back off to the left. Half a dozen more bolts cross the canvas as long orange-yellow streaks, and two further bursts of sparks flare at the left edge. His chest panel glows red, blue and green in the murk.

The corridor itself is barely described: grey wall plates, a doorway, the suggestion of a second dark figure at the right. Smoke does most of the work, and the artist has let the paint stay loose and dragged, so nothing has a clean edge anywhere except the blade.

The composition sets a man who is finished against a man who is still working, and puts the viewer on the floor with the first of the two. Part of our Star Wars collection, alongside another boarding action from the same war and the empty corridor with only a silhouette in it.