Graham Sutherland, O.M. (1903-1980)

Study of a Rock Formation is a work of 1977 and relates to a number of works painted during the artist’s return to depicting Pembrokeshire between 1968 and 1980. The same rock appears in Study of a Rock Formation II, 1973 (see exhibition catalogue, Graham Sutherland, London, Tate, p. 161, no. 217).

Sutherland described this rock form to Rosalind Thuillier as ‘like three disks welded together and supported on a pedestal of rampant oak roots' (quoted in ‘With Graham Sutherland in Pembrokeshire’, Arts Review, xxix, 1977, p. 416).