Having moved to Cornwall in 1951, Alexander Mackenzie sought to ingratiate himself in the Cornish art scene, admiring the work of and meeting some of the stalwarts of this landscape including Ben Nicholson, Peter Lanyon and John Wells. Mackenzie was elected a member of the Penwith Society of Arts a year later and settled in the fishing town of Newlyn in 1953. This period marked the emergence of his style, revealing a manner focused on capturing the essence of a landscape, with an emphasis on geology and geography interwoven into his observations. The present example was painted towards the end of the artist’s time living in Cornwall, and, as the title suggests, is set in the neighbouring county of Devon, around a granite tor on the eastern edge of Dartmoor. The Art Gallery of New South Wales, Australia holds a strikingly similar work in its collection titled ‘Reclining Landscape’, from the following year.