Anduin Lothar Standing Before the Alliance Army — Print & Oil Painting

The commander is looking at the ground. In a tall narrow frame he stands slightly off centre, head bowed and turned to his right, both hands open and empty at his sides, and the picture spends all of its considerable technical polish on a man doing nothing. No weapon is drawn anywhere in the image.

The armour is the subject the camera actually loves. Steel and blue plate with gold edging, a heavy pauldron on each shoulder, a scaled mail shirt underneath, riveted bands down the arms, a wide belt with a moulded buckle, and a blue tabard falling to the knee. Every surface has been given its own finish: brushed metal, polished gold, dull leather, wet scale.

Behind him the army is out of focus by design. Rank after rank of helmeted soldiers fills the lower background in soft gold, the spears above them reduced to fine vertical marks, and a city skyline sits on the horizon in the haze. The sun is low and directly behind the host, which throws his whole figure into rim light and leaves the front of him in shadow.

The face is the only place the polish gives way. Long brown hair pushed back, a full beard, deep lines at the eye, mouth closed. He is younger than most portraits of him and he is not being heroic in this one.

The man carried an inheritance he could not do much with. He was the last of an ancient royal bloodline, remembered afterwards by a title borrowed from a lion, and he ended by commanding the armies of an alliance that had to be assembled out of kingdoms which distrusted each other. A portrait that puts a whole host at his back and gives him a bowed head and empty hands has read the job description correctly. From our World of Warcraft collection, beside the same commander painted older, among standing stones and the giant statues that line the approach to that kingdom's keep.