Quiet
Marengo

From the battlefield.
To your wall.

It began as Copenhagen. The Duke of Wellington’s horse — that seemed right for a piece with English bones and a certain battlefield gravity. But somewhere in the making, the work changed direction entirely. The rough and rustic fell away. Something more refined insisted on existing.

Leigh turned to Marengo instead. Napoleon’s grey Arabian stallion — small, steady, wounded eight times in battle and never once throwing his rider. A horse that outlived its Emperor, ended up in England as a trophy of Waterloo and whose skeleton stands at the National Army Museum to this day. Wellington refused to exhibit Copenhagen alongside him. The two horses, it seems, were always destined to be kept apart — until now.

The finish is not a single coat of paint. It is layers — base coats, iridescent pearl metallics in different hues, built up with the knowledge of someone who spent decades as a specialist paint sprayer before he ever picked up a brush for art. Each layer was applied and treated with a precision that has nothing to do with accident and everything to do with forty years of expertise. The whole surface reacts differently to light at different times of day. You will not see the same piece twice.

The form itself was made from scratch — metal, hand-formed, finished in polyester resin, carved and worked with mixed media until it became what it needed to be. The spacers and hanging mechanism on the reverse were made by Leigh too. Nothing bought in, nothing off the shelf.

Quiet Marengo. Not a trophy and not a shout. Calm, controlled presence on your wall — exactly as the horse itself was described by those who rode alongside Napoleon. Quiet strength rather than noise.