Han Solo and Chewbacca March Through the Yavin Ceremony — Print & Oil Painting

A vast stone hall seen straight down its axis, with the whole composition built on one-point perspective. Ranks of soldiers line both sides in tight formation, receding to a vanishing point; the walls are colossal cut blocks; and at the far end three vertical shafts of white light fall from the ceiling onto the dais. The aisle between the ranks runs from the bottom edge of the canvas to that light.

Three figures walk away from us up the aisle: a man in a dark vest on the left, a very tall Wookiee in the centre, and a slighter figure in pale clothes on the right. They are painted small, near the bottom of the picture, with their backs to us. The artist has refused to let any of them turn a face to the viewer.

The colour is almost entirely stone: grey-green blocks, olive and white uniforms, a floor the colour of sand. The only warm note anywhere is the ochre of the vest on the left, and the only bright one is the cold light at the end of the hall.

The scene is the one the first film chose to end on, not the shot that destroyed the station but the ceremony afterwards, staged as pure symmetry, with a smuggler who had already been paid and had come back anyway walking up the middle of it.

From our Star Wars collection, alongside the Han Solo portrait and the Rebel command group.