Rogues Leap Across Dalaran's Rooftops at Dusk — Print & Oil Painting

The architecture is completely static and two figures are not, and the whole picture turns on that contrast. A broad paved street runs across the frame between cream stone facades with violet and gold domes; every line of it is level, symmetrical and settled. Then one figure is caught in mid-air at the upper right with a lit weapon trailing, and another is pinned against a wall at the upper left, both frozen at the top of a jump.

The central building is given the most detail and the most furniture. An arched doorway glows teal under a circular teal fanlight, a large gold disc marked like a dial sits on the dome above, ivy hangs from the balconies, and a market stall with a violet canopy, barrels and crates is set up directly in front of the entrance.

The street is genuinely busy and the crowd has been observed rather than repeated. People in robes walk in twos and threes, a pair in armour stand talking, somebody rides a white beast in from the right, a small dog trots across the paving, and further back a figure sits on a step. Nobody is reacting to the two people flying over their heads.

Colour is warm and low-key: rose paving, cream walls, a pale violet sky with soft cloud. The measured saturation is among the lowest in this group of Dalaran works, and the violet domes and teal lamps are held well below full strength, so the whole scene reads as evening rather than as decoration.

The important thing about these streets is who is allowed to use them. The city took the unusual position of admitting both sides of a continental war at once and declaring itself outside it, granting each of them a quarter and a charter, so for a stretch of years this was the one paved surface in the world where enemies passed each other at arm's length and neither drew. A painting of a crowded street where two armed people are visibly moving fast and nobody looks up is set squarely inside that arrangement. Part of our World of Warcraft collection, beside the market square at the other end of that street and the same quarter emptied out at dusk.