Baskerville Rock

Robert Vickrey wrote about the present work: "Somewhere in my travels I came across a huge boulder left over from the ice age. It interested me because it rather resembled a large skull; the pits seemed to form nostrils, the crevices, lips. The resemblance wasn't striking, but it gave me an idea. Why not change the contours of the rock so they subtly hinted at a great dog, perhaps the hounds of the Baskervilles?...I also wanted to suggest a surfer on top of the rock, daring the unknown astride the head. But the figure is incidental. The rock is the important element in the picture, and I knew that if I didn't get the texture of the rock right, the painting would fail." (as quoted in, R. Vickrey, D. Cochrane, New Techniques in Egg Tempera, New York, 1973, p. 132)