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‘As the rehearsal finishes, somebody shouts to just join on the back of the marching ranks. As I fall into line at the rear of some of the finest pomp and ceremony this country can muster, a few things dawn on me; I realise I have never marched before and that I may look a little silly even trying to march whilst out of uniform, carrying my easel and paint gear’.

And so it was that Rob Pointon, a member of the Royal Institute of Oil Painters (ROI), civilian artist from Stoke-on-Trent, found himself stepping off from the gardens of Buckingham Palace at the end of a Coronation rehearsal in May 2023, attempting to keep time with the Massed Bands while balancing an easel under one arm. Yet that moment captures something essential about Rob’s time with the Household Division: proximity, improvisation, and a willingness to commit fully to events as they unfolded.

Troops at Waterloo Station during nighttime rehearsal

And I’ll bet Rob looked smart as a carrot too. He was always well dressed in jacket and tie, and he had seen plenty of marching up close for this wasn’t his first time in and amongst the Guards. In 2020, in a pandemic stricken Whitehall, Captain Josh Edwards, The Life Guards, had been Captain of the Queen’s Life Guard when a trooper had knocked on his door to tell him that an eccentric man had put up an easel by one of the sentry boxes and was at work painting one of the mounted dutymen. A curious Josh went to see for himself and quickly struck up what would become a firm friendship with Rob, beginning a partnership that would see Rob imbed with the Household Cavalry during the last two years of Queen Elizabeth II’s reign, covering the last Queen’s Birthday Parade and The Queen’s Funeral, among other historic events. Fast forward a couple of years and I found myself admiring Rob’s works from that period when, in 2023, I was posted as a staff officer to Horse Guards where two of his paintings were hung on the walls. I wondered if I could tempt Rob back to London, and after securing permission from The Major General, I emailed Rob out of the blue to introduce myself and see if he’d like to return to the fold. It seemed a natural progression that, having chronicled the Household Cavalry during Queen Elizabeth II’s final two years as our Colonel-in-Chief, he might now turn his attention to focus to the Foot Guards and cover events during our new Colonel-in-Chief’s Coronation year.

Rob arrived at Wellington Barracks without fanfare. Before the Coronation rehearsals began in earnest, Rob focused on securing a workable position for the main procession. The timetable allowed little margin for adjustment. Security was layered, permissions were complex, and suitable positions were fiercely contested by reporters, contractors, security, policemen, pigeons and not forgetting republican protestors who wanted a good spot too. Yet persistence and no small measure of good will secured Rob a place beside the statue of King Charles I at the intersection of Whitehall, Trafalgar Square, and the Mall. From there he sketched away and subsequently prepared two large canvases in advance: one anticipating sunlight, the other prepared for rain.

The first event we planned for Rob to paint was the King’s Presentation of new Colours and Standards in a historic tri-service parade at Buckingham Palace. The Royal Navy, the King’s Company Grenadier Guards, and the Royal Air Force stood before their sovereign as new Colours bearing the Royal Cypher of Charles III were ceremoniously blessed and bestowed. Rob was granted permission to paint the rehearsal and the day itself.

The tempo of events building up to the Coronation gathered pace and next on the list was the full-dress rehearsal, to be conducted at night. This saw thousands of troops arriving at Waterloo Station by train before marching across the Thames and through quiet London streets. Rob painted from the mezzanine above the concourse, capturing scarlet ranks emerging onto platforms teeming with late commuters beneath modern ironwork and strip lighting. It was an improbable and compelling sight which Rob described as being like a bright ceremonial flashmob.

By the morning of the Coronation, two large canvases were ready for Rob to capture the processions live with his brush and paints. Rain arrived as forecast. The mounted King’s Procession passed through drizzle, and the returning Coronation Procession through heavier rain. From ground level Rob watched thousands of troops negotiate the tight turn before splitting through Admiralty Arch without losing their formation. The Gold State Coach moved steadily through the downpour. When the final ranks cleared and barriers opened, Rob’s exit was less elegant: two enormous wet canvases carried through a surging crowd, a police-assisted passage across Birdcage Walk, a flat car battery at Wellington Barracks, and delayed departure back home to Stoke through road closures. Rob says that only on the motorway north did the scale of the project suddenly register on his fatigued mind.

Founders’ Day at the Royal Hospital	Captain Billy Richards, Welsh Guards

After a couple of weeks away, Rob returned to London to paint a busy summer of events. In June, Rob painted Founder’s Day at the Royal Hospital Chelsea from within one of the communal wards. He found that the vantage provided insight into the lives of the Pensioners’ camaraderie, banter, quiet dignity, while capturing the parade beneath the gilded statue of Charles II.

Later that month came the first King’s Birthday Parade of the new reign. Having painted previous parades from elevated positions, he chose ground level between the stands on Horse Guards Parade. His focus was the Left Form, the precise ninety-degree wheel executed without breaking cadence. A heatwave created haze and dust clouds over the parade ground. Beating Retreat in July delivered three very different evenings: one biblical downpour that damaged instruments beyond repair, followed by two golden sunsets. Pyrotechnics against rain-soaked uniforms made for powerful imagery.

By November, attention turned to the National Act of Remembrance in Whitehall, followed, in March 2024 by the Welsh Guards’ St David’s Day Parade at Windsor. Rob stayed in the officers’ mess, studying works by Rex Whistler and Terence Cuneo hanging on the walls and finding time to paint a lounging Captain Billy Richards in the ante room. St Patrick’s Day at Aldershot was next. Rain, wind and an overturned easel tested patience during rehearsals. But these occasions provide a rare gift to an artist: disciplined repetition. Movements are practised, refined and repeated until exact. Over time, complex figure compositions can be built with unusual accuracy. The silhouette of the Welsh Guards’ mascot became the focal point of the finished painting. Later in 2024, permission was secured for Rob to paint the Changing of the Guard within the Buckingham Palace forecourt. Looked after by Lieutenant Rupert Elmhirst and Lieutenant Bertie Tweed, both Grenadier Guards, he observed three guard changes from inside the forecourt. With thousands of eager tourists pressed against the railings, he became a spectacle in his own right. Police unlocked cordons to allow him to pass back through the crowd uninterrupted and it was an unusual sight: a civilian painter gliding through the Palace gates and around the Mall.

Changing the Guard

I was keen that Rob recorded the greener side of the Guards and got him into the field. Following a couple of days on exercise with Guardsmen in their camouflage gear, sketching them eating rations, chatting, and smoking, and firing machine guns, Rob’s final installation was back in London, inside the grounds of St James’s Palace. Again, permission had come through from up high, this time for Rob to paint one of the sentries outside Clarence House. Around this time it gave me great pleasure to invite Rob up to the officers’ mess at Jimmy’s when the Micks were on guard so that I could give him lunch and, most excitingly of all, show him the artwork there, including Paul Maze’s rendition of Elizabeth II’s Coronation, painted in the same rainy colours that Rob had used almost exactly 70 years later.

On the ranges

November 2024 saw the climax of Rob’s hard work: the culminating exhibition of his second residency, at Panter & Hall in Pall Mall. Rob is much too modest to say so, but he insisted on donating a sizable sum of the exhibition proceeds to the Household Division Charity. He also gifted to the Household Division one of his most special works of all, a poignant and atmospheric painting of Queen Elizabeth II’s Lying-in-State, which he began in his first residency and, fittingly, completed in his second residency when he was allowed to sneak into Westminster Hall after hours and get the lighting just as it had been in 2022.

As Rob’s second residency drew to a close, he spoke about the transition back to what he called, with a wry grin, ‘post-military life on civvy-street’. The work he had created was, in his own assessment, ‘certainly my most significant collection of paintings to date’. But it came at a personal cost. The grandeur of processions and parades sat alongside the reality of motorways, late-night returns, and missing children’s bedtimes. In his book, All the Queen’s Horses and All the King’s Men, Rob asks, ‘Do we artists have anything to offer in the modern world in terms of ‘history painting’? When every moment is captured in high definition from every conceivable angle, what does the human hand add?’ His answer is unequivocal. He believes in the power of plein air painting: ‘recording from direct human experience, responding honestly to the real-life situation in front of us’. A camera may freeze detail while paint can direct it. A lens records everything while an artist chooses what matters. ‘Flicks and dashes reflecting motion, moving light and energies which can be missed by a camera’. Those moments of direct encounter, he argues, ‘spin the real gold’.

Guardsman Simmonds, Grenadier Guards, bringing refreshments

It is worth remembering that this all began with a chance encounter on Whitehall during the COVID-19 pandemic with a painter setting up beside a mounted sentry. From that modest starting point came a body of work that now includes the final State occasions of Queen Elizabeth II’s reign, and the Coronation and first ceremonial year of King Charles III, fixed in oil on canvas forever. That is a remarkable outcome for what was, at the time, simply an artist deciding to paint what was in front of him.

Works by Rob Pointon as well his book All the Queen’s Horses and All the King’s Men are available at www.robpointon.co.uk. For enquiries including prints: info@robpointon.co.uk