Darth Vader and stormtroopers killing Rebels — Print & Oil Painting

A panorama built to be read from left to right, and everything in it moves the same way. Vader leads at the left of centre, stormtroopers pour across the middle distance, and the people being advanced upon are falling out of the right edge of the frame.

He is caught mid-stride with the cape thrown out flat behind him. The red blade is up and back over the shoulder, held ready rather than swung, while the other arm reaches straight out in front with the glove open and the fingers spread. Nobody standing within range of that hand is still upright.

Under the black there is red. A maroon undertunic shows at the chest and again at the hip where the outer layers separate, which is unusual for this costume and lends the figure a warmth the armour normally refuses to carry.

The troopers behind him are painted as texture rather than as individuals: white shapes stacked back into the hillside, dozens of them, each smaller and softer than the last, with red bolts stitching the full width of the canvas in flat horizontal streaks. Only the pair in the near left corner are resolved enough to count fittings on.

The defenders are given the right-hand third and very little dignity, in tan and brown field dress, one down across the bottom corner with a rifle still in his hands and another folding at the knees. Everyone stands on soft green-grey moorland under a pale sky, painted like ordinary countryside, and that is what makes the picture cold. From our Star Wars collection, next to the same advance directed from behind the line and the Force turned on men already down.