Thrawn Sipping a Drink by a Sunlit Window — Print & Oil Painting

Nothing is happening, which is rare enough in this collection to be the whole appeal. He is drinking. The glass is at his mouth and tilted, his fingers are wrapped around it, and the picture has been stopped mid-swallow.

The glass is the technical showpiece. It is a plain straight-sided tankard, and the painter has thought about how it behaves: the amber liquid darkens toward the base, a pale head of foam sits on top, the near wall of the glass displaces the fingers seen through it, and small bubbles cling along the inside. Where the drink runs thin at the surface the light comes through it warm, and where it is deep it goes almost brown.

Behind him a window falls across the wall as three soft vertical bars of pale gold, blurred at their edges, while the right half of the background stays a flat cool lavender. He sits on the boundary between the two, which is why the front of his face takes the warm light and the back of his head and neck stay cold blue.

The expression rewards attention. Eyes lowered, brow drawn very slightly in, the mouth committed to the glass: he is tasting the drink and forming an opinion about it. This is the only picture in the group where he is doing something with nobody watching.

The uniform is still on, the rank plaque still squared away at the chest, and the room around him is quiet and characterless. A commander at ease in a borrowed room, half lit, thinking about something other than a fleet. Part of our Star Wars collection, beside the profile study lit from two sides and the seated pose between two guards.