#021 The Spoils of War - Quadriga of St. Mark, 2020

Acrylic and oilstick on canvas

120 x 180 cm / 47 x 71 inches

Their journey is an epic tale of power and theft. They were plundered from their original home in Greece, hauled off to Constantinople to overlook the chariot races in the Hippodrome, only to be yanked from there by crusaders in 1204, who dragged them to Venice and slapped them on top of St. Mark’s Basilica. But the journey doesn’t stop there! Napoleon, ever the collector of other people’s treasures, grabbed the horses during his occupation of Venice, whisked them off to Paris, and proudly displayed them on the Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel as if to say, Look what I can take. And, after his fall, they were returned to Venice by none other than the Duke of Wellington, who, of all things, paid for their safe journey back out of his own pocket.

Now imagine: Crispin Sturrock, an artist from Marlow, Buckinghamshire, steeping himself in all this. The man doesn’t just decide, “I’ll paint these horses because they’re famous.” He studies them, visits them, meditates on them. He becomes a little obsessed. Because these aren’t just objects; they’re symbols. They’re icons of power and desire, and—let’s face it—a reminder of humanity’s unending urge to take and claim.

When you look at Sturrock’s painting, you feel that weight. He’s not telling a pretty story; he’s grappling with a brutal, relentless history. Sturrock’s colours are dark and dense; the horses are looming figures pulled from the past, speaking of the tension between beauty and brutality, cultural heritage and conquest. The Four Horses represent all the beauty of the ancient world—but also all the greed and violence humans have inflicted on each other to claim that beauty as their own. And they’ve seen it all: empires rising and falling, emperors and generals, artists and curators, all vying for their place in history.

And yet, for all this drama, Sturrock’s painting isn’t preaching. It’s reflecting, prodding us to ask uncomfortable questions: Who gets to “own” culture? Who decides what’s preserved, and why does power so often get to call the shots? In The Spoils of War, Sturrock is giving us a mirror. He’s saying, “Look. This is who we are. These horses are a testament to our endless desire to claim and conquer—and the quiet resilience of art to survive it all.”

Sturrock’s The Spoils of War does what the best art should do: it invites us to feel the weight of history and wrestle with it. He’s not here to give easy answers; he’s here to make us look these horses in the eye and confront what they represent. Through these bronze beasts, he’s digging into the messy, layered legacy of cultural heritage and asking us to reconsider what “preservation” really means in a world where beauty so often goes hand-in-hand with conquest.

This painting isn’t just about ancient horses on a church rooftop—it’s a commentary, a challenge, and a celebration of art’s endurance in the face of everything that’s tried to control it. And in Sturrock’s hands, it becomes not just a reflection of the Four Horses’ journey, but a meditation on art itself: its resilience, its vulnerability, and its irreplaceable role in our history.

So go ahead, stand in front of The Spoils of War and let yourself feel that legacy.

#040 Power and the Union - Quadriga of Florence, 2021

Acrylic and oilstick on canvas

120 x 180 cm / 47 x 71 inches

Power and the Union is a meditation on strength and partnership, draped in Florentine legacy. This quadriga, inspired by the marble horses of Bartolomeo Ammannati’s Fountain of Neptune in Piazza della Signoria, channels the very spirit of Renaissance grandeur—yet does so with modern restraint and tension.

At first glance, the painting is serene: a cool blue canvas, with the four horses rendered in stark linear clarity. But stay longer, and the pressure rises. These beasts aren’t galloping—they’re bracing. Their outlines, etched like memory into the paint, suggest something deeper beneath the surface. Not just water, but a storm. Not just strength, but the negotiation of it. The power of union, yes—but also its fragility.

Sturrock’s fascination with Florence lies not in its tourism or romance, but in its contradictions. The Fountain of Neptune was commissioned to celebrate a political marriage—the joining of Francesco de’ Medici to the Habsburg Johanna of Austria in 1565. But what was meant to glorify harmony became a monument many scorned as cold, even ugly. Neptune, the Roman god of the sea, looms over the square with a crown stolen from river gods and horses more restless than regal. It was, quite literally, a display of dominance masquerading as celebration.

In this piece, Sturrock seizes that paradox.

His four horses, like their stone predecessors, strain against the boundaries of their own meaning. They are neither mythic nor decorative. They are messengers of something more primal: the complicated dance between control and submission. They carry the weight of ceremonial symbolism—the marriage of nations, the facade of unity—but with teeth bared and nostrils flared. A warning, perhaps, that power rarely rides easy, and that even unions forged in marble can crack with time.

The background—layers of marine blue, ink and cobalt—suggests submerged truths. Motifs swirl beneath the surface like half-remembered dreams or unfinished battles. It evokes not only the watery domain of Neptune, but also the psychological depth of allegiance: what we bind ourselves to, and why.

Sturrock isn’t retelling the myth—he’s dissecting it. With a palette that conceals more than it reveals, and draughtsmanship that pares the horses down to their essence, Power and the Union is both homage and interrogation. He’s inviting his viewer—not just to admire the forms, but to reflect on what they represent: submission for spectacle, unity for power, beauty for political theatre.

This painting, like the Florentine fountain that inspired it, is about control dressed as celebration.

And in this restrained, masterful blue, it whispers a truth as old as Neptune himself: that behind every triumphal procession, there is always the shadow of resistance.

#046 Peace Descending - Quadriga of Wellington Arch, 2022

Acrylic and oilstick on canvas

120 x 180 cm / 47 x 71 inches

In Peace Descending, Sturrock turns his gaze to the soaring bronze quadriga atop London’s Wellington Arch—a monument not of war, but of its uneasy aftermath. Set against a visceral red that seethes like the final heartbeat of battle, the four horses emerge in stark relief, their lines urgent, animated, almost aflame. Yet at their centre rides not a general nor a king, but a woman: the Winged Figure of Peace, lowering her arms as if to still the storm.

This work is tension incarnate.

The quadriga atop Wellington Arch was sculpted by Adrian Jones and installed in 1912, commissioned decades after the arch itself was built to commemorate the Duke of Wellington’s victories. Ironically, the arch was originally crowned by a vast statue of the Duke himself—unpopular, oversized, and eventually removed. In its place came this newer vision: a celebration not of a man, but of an idea. Peace—not passive or gentle, but triumphant—driving a war chariot once used to glorify empire.

Sturrock seizes this contradiction and runs with it.

The red is not a background—it’s a battlefield. There are ghost motifs lurking in the paint: outlines of conflict, empire, resistance, and memory. The horses are drawn in frantic momentum, their mouths open in defiance or exhaustion. Peace rides with them, but not comfortably. Her presence is ceremonial, precarious, as if only barely holding back the forces beneath her.

There is no neat resolution here. Just as Adrian Jones struggled for years to find funding and approval for his sculpture—just as the arch itself was moved, reimagined, reframed—Peace Descending reflects the dissonance of monuments and memory. Who gets remembered? Who gets replaced? And what do we ask of symbols once the noise has faded?

Sturrock’s rendering of the Wellington Arch quadriga is deliberately unfinished in feeling. The strokes are rushed, the figures wild. This is not peace settled—it is peace attempted. And yet there is dignity here, too. The composition holds, the forms are composed even in their chaos. It is a meditation on restraint. On what it takes to dismount the machinery of war and steer it toward something quieter.

In Peace Descending, we are reminded that peace is never static—it is pulled, steered, and sometimes merely held aloft by will. This is not a painting about stillness. It is a portrait of peace in motion, descending with weight and purpose into a world still struggling to make room for it.