Vesemir Battles a Winged Beast in the Reeds — Print & Oil Painting

Two black wings open across the entire bottom half of this canvas, primaries splayed and separated, one of them still mid-beat with the feathers bent by the air. They fill so much of the frame that for a moment you read the picture as a dark abstract shape with a man perched on top of it.

The head is pushed into the lower left corner and it is deliberately hard to look at. Bald, raw pink and red, wrinkled and loose in the way a vulture's head is, with a heavy hooked beak levered open and one small dark eye set far back. There is no nobility in the design at all, which is unusual for a winged monster and much more frightening.

Above and behind it, the witcher has come down onto one knee with his right arm at the very top of its travel, the sword held point-down and reversed, gripped in both the fist and the pommel. The arm has stopped. The next movement is downward and the painting ends one beat before it.

His face is the reason the picture works. Grey hair loose at the shoulders, a long grey moustache and a short beard, deep vertical lines from nose to jaw, the mouth clamped shut, the whole expression that of an old man doing something extremely heavy and doing it correctly. He is not enjoying himself.

Gold reeds catch a little light along the left edge, the wood behind is nearly black, and the rest is shadow. Vesemir is the oldest witcher left and the one who taught the others their trade, which is worth knowing when you look at how efficiently he is working here. From our The Witcher collection, alongside the same man at rest with his blade drawn.