Challenge to fight. Series "Shrovetide"

Two men are locked in a confrontation: one stands with an arm raised high as if about to strike, head thrown back and mouth open, while the other braces against him at close quarters, a hand lifted near his own face. Both figures sit against a bare, undefined ground.

Rendered almost entirely in greys, buff, and reddish-brown, the image leaves charcoal-like underdrawing exposed beneath thin, dry washes of paint. Anatomy is loosely blocked in rather than finished, and the sparing, urgent brushwork keeps the encounter feeling unresolved and physically tense.