Geralt Leads Roach Through a Thatched Village — Print & Oil Painting

The nearest thing to you is a flight of plank steps let into the earth, and the artist has spent real time on them: the grain of the boards, the worn soil between, the poppies and white and yellow field flowers crowding both sides, and a white hen picking about in the grass at the lower left. Whatever else this is, it is a picture of a place where people live.

Two buildings hold the frame. On the left, a small log cabin under a low thatch behind a woven wattle fence of split hazel; on the right and much larger, a longhouse with a deep golden thatch, crossed timbers along the ridge, squared log walls and a barrel set against them. The path runs up between the two and out of sight.

The thatch is the best passage in the painting. It is laid in with long dragged strokes of straw yellow, olive and warm grey, thick at the eaves and thinning toward the ridge, and it is lit by a low warm sun while the sky above it has already gone slate blue. That collision of warm roof and cold sky is the whole weather report.

The travellers are far up the path and small: a pale horse walking, a white-haired figure at its head with two hilts on his back, both seen from behind and about to be hidden by the corner of the larger house. Chimney smoke goes up straight, and a dozen crows are scattered across the dark part of the sky.

Shown in our The Witcher collection. The weathered wooden mill under a grey sky is the same landscape with the sun off and the colour drained out of it.