A Star Destroyer Plunges Into the Ocean — Print & Oil Painting

The hull sits low in an open sea, broadside to us, and water is coming off it everywhere. Dozens of separate cascades pour from the flanks and the overhangs, some in solid white columns, some already broken into spray and drifting, and the whole lower half of the ship is wrapped in the mist they raise.

The picture will not say which way it is going. Water sheeting off a hull looks the same whether the hull has just broken the surface or is settling into it, and the artist has given us no wake, no list, no fire and no debris to decide with. That withholding is the most interesting decision in the image.

The light is high and bright. Brightness measures well above half, the sky is a soft blue with white cumulus stacked along the horizon, and the sun is somewhere behind the viewer, so the superstructure is evenly lit and the shadows are weak. It is a fine clear day, which makes the thing in the water considerably stranger than bad weather would have.

The command tower stands intact at the top with its dome, and the hull below it is legible plate by plate through the falling water. Nothing is damaged. This is not a wreck.

It sits in our Star Wars collection, and it answers the same silhouette burning in the same kind of sea almost point for point. See also the ring of them at anchor.