Born in Birmingham, England in 1923 as an illegitimate child of a seventeen-year old girl, Geoffrey Rock had a career as an artist which spanned more than fifty years. At an early age he showed exceptional artistic talent, which earned him a scholarship to study art at the Birmingham College of Art. Of this training he said: "It was a year before we were allowed to touch a brush, and three years before we moved from plaster casts to life drawing." (Amos) Later he studied at the London Central School of Art.

He was inspired by the perfectionist painters of the Dutch and Flemish schools and influenced by the great realist painters of our time. At the end of World War II, living with his wife, Joan, in a small L...