Gungan Warriors Riding Kaadu Across the Plains of Naboo — Print & Oil Painting

The picture belongs to an older school of illustration. Cumulus banked high and airbrushed soft, grassland laid in as flat bands of yellow-green, contours kept clean and hard, colour set down without visible brushwork anywhere. It reads as a plate from a book rather than as a canvas.

The lead rider fills the right of a very wide frame. His mount comes forward at an angle, long tapering snout sheathed in a tan armour plate, reins running back to the fist, hide painted in scaled grey-green over a heavy shoulder. The saddle rig is the best-observed passage in the whole image: a rolled bundle, a drum-shaped case, a round shield bearing a pale device, and feathered tassels swinging at the flank.

The Gungan sits forward over the neck in an ochre robe, long ear flaps hanging past the jaw, a spear held low and angled down across the picture. Three tall banded plumes rise from the rig behind him and cut into the clouds, which is what keeps the horizontal format from going inert.

Behind him eight or nine more riders are strung along the crest of a low ridge, each smaller and paler than the one before, spears upright. Two figures stand on foot at the far right horizon. The column is crossing open ground with no enemy anywhere in the frame.

That emptiness is the historically correct choice. This army's part in the war for its planet was to march into open grassland in full view and hold the attention of a mechanised force while the outcome was decided somewhere else entirely. From our Star Wars collection, alongside the queen alone in her throne room and the poster for the film these plains belong to.