Ahsoka Tano Stands Cloaked in a Dim Corridor — Print & Oil Painting

Nearly the whole canvas is dark, and the figure stands in the one part of it that is not. One narrow band of pale light enters from the upper left and lands across her shoulder and the side of her face. Behind and around her the room is brown-black, a run of columns just readable on the left, a shelf of pale objects dissolving away on the right.

She is dressed in full robes, which is the striking thing. A heavy outer cloak in deep maroon hangs from the shoulders to the floor with the sleeves falling well past the wrists; underneath are layered tunics: a pale collar at the throat, a mid-brown tabard, a dark cloth belt wound twice, light grey trousers below. Her hands are nowhere to be seen. The whole costume is closed.

Against all that fabric the head does the work. The montrals and lekku are shorter here than in the later canvases, banded white and blue-grey, and the face beneath them is painted young: clear blue eyes, a small mouth, the white markings crisp on an orange-brown cheek. She looks directly at the viewer with no particular expression at all.

The value range is very narrow and it is held there on purpose. There is no bright accent anywhere in the image, no blade, no emblem, no weapon of any kind, and the picture is a great deal quieter for it. This is a portrait of somebody waiting in a building rather than of somebody in a story.

From our Star Wars collection, beside the study by the Coruscant skyline, where the same stillness is given a window and a city.