Luke Skywalker Stands Beside His Snowspeeder on Hoth — Print & Oil Painting

The lowest-contrast canvas in the group, and it earns that reading honestly: the entire picture is a whiteout. Blowing snow fills the air from edge to edge, the horizon has gone, the mountains behind are two or three tones of grey, and the light is a soft diffuse glare with a pale sun burning somewhere behind his right shoulder.

He stands full length in the middle of it, feet planted apart, in the orange flight suit: the grey life-support box on the chest, the harness webbing in faded teal running over both shoulders and down the legs, white boots with grey shin plates crusted in snow. Snow has settled on his shoulders and in his hair, and the hair is being pushed sideways by the same wind.

Under his left arm he carries the helmet, held loosely against the hip, its white shell marked in red and grey. That is the detail the picture turns on. Carrying the helmet rather than wearing it means the flying is over, and the artist has painted the moment after rather than the moment during.

Behind him and to the left the speeder lies in the snow, tilted and partly buried, the rear airbrake frame standing up empty against the haze. It is painted dimmer and cooler than he is, already half surrendered to the weather. He is looking away to the right at something the canvas does not show.

Our Star Wars collection sets it beside the same pilot kneeling in the wreckage and another machine lost to the same snow.