Imperial Walkers Gather on a Ridge Above Hoth — Print & Oil Painting

Where the ground-level canvases of this battle keep the horizon low, this one opens the sky and puts nearly everything into it. A vast pale planet hangs in the upper centre, near enough for its cloud bands to be legible, and behind the ridge a range of snow peaks runs the whole width of the frame under a clean blue.

The walkers are drawn up along the crest rather than advancing. One stands at centre, square to us and whole, its head lifted; another waits at the far right; two more are set back to the left. They are white and pale grey with red markings on the head and flanks, and the light is high and even, so they read as objects arranged on a shelf rather than as a line closing in.

One of them is burning. The second machine from the left has taken a hit on the near side of the head, orange flame and a black column of smoke pouring out sideways, the whole body beginning to tip. It is the single event in an otherwise static picture, and it has been placed away from the centre so that you find it second rather than first.

The air belongs to the fighters. Six or seven TIEs cross the sky at different depths and angles, each a dark ball slung between two flat panels, and red bolts rake in flat from the right edge. Down in the lower left corner a small orange fire burns on the snow, the only warm mark anywhere on the ground.

Filed in our Star Wars collection, alongside the same two machines marching into a sunset and the companion canvas taken down to ground level.