Obi-Wan Kenobi Watches X-Wings From a Desert Cave — Print & Oil Painting

An old man walking out of a cave mouth into a battle, and the composition is built around that arch. The dark curve of the rock frames the top and right of the canvas, and everything bright — sky, gunship, distant towers — sits inside it. You are looking out with him.

He is genuinely aged here: white hair blown back, a thin beard, the face gaunt rather than weathered. The robes are enormous, layered dark over dark, and they billow behind him in a way that gives the figure real physical momentum. His hand rests on the sabre hilt at his belt but the weapon is not drawn.

The world outside the cave is doing the storytelling. A Republic gunship banks low over sandstone towers, a fighter cuts across the upper sky, and a green planet hangs enormous behind the clouds. At the bottom of the frame, half-buried in rubble, lies a fallen droid and a length of broken pipe.

The palette is olive, bronze and dust, with one pale gold slash of light falling across his lower robes. Part of our Star Wars collection — for the same character at the other end of his life see the hooded young portrait.