This work is a sketch for a mural completed at The Children's Park, Royal Marsden, Surrey in 1963-1963. This was a major public commission for Armstrong who by the 1960s was increasingly engaged in large-scael decorative projects. This work offers a rare insight into Armstrong's working process. Horses had long been a central motif in his art, signifying both power and endurance. The simplified forms and muted palette give the work a timeless quality.

John Armstrong was one of the most versatile and distinctive British Artists of the 20th Century. Trained at St John's Wood School of Art, he first established himself in the 1920s as a painter and theatre designer. In the 1930s, he became closely associated with Unit One, the Modernist group led by Paul Nash, which placed him at the centre of British avant-garde painting between the wars.

During the Second World War, Armstrong worked as an official war artist. producing some of his most powerful allegorical canvases. Int he Post-War decades, he developed a distinctive, symbolic style that translated equally well into easel paintings, murals and public commissions. His imagery - often focused on horses, classical motifs and dreamlike landscapes - combined clarity of form with an underlying poetic intensity. His works are represented in major collections, including Tate and the Imperial War Museum, and he is increasingly recognised as a key figure in the development of British Modernism.