The Rothko Room at the National Gallery of Art

An entire tower for a single painter

This room occupies one of the towers of the National Gallery's East Building, designed by I. M. Pei and opened in 1978. It is devoted almost entirely to Mark Rothko, a Latvian-born painter who became a central figure of postwar American Abstract Expressionism, known for large fields of color with softened edges, meant to immerse the viewer rather than depict a subject.

1. A will emptied of meaning within months

Mark Rothko takes his own life in February 1970, leaving behind nearly 800 works. His three executors sign two agreements with the Marlborough Gallery a few months later: the sale of 100 paintings for $1.8 million, and the consignment of the remaining 698 — prices later judged scandalously low, as several works were resold almost immediately for six to ten times as much.

One of the three executors, Bernard Reis, turns out to also be a director, secretary and treasurer of the Marlborough Gallery itself — a blatant conflict of interest that Rothko's children, Kate and Christopher, take to court in New York.

2. A ruling that rebuilds the painter's legacy

On 18 December 1975, Judge Millard Midonick rules in favor of the Rothko children: the two negligent executors are removed from office and, together with the Marlborough Gallery, ordered to pay roughly $9.25 million in damages, and Marlborough is required to return 658 paintings not yet resold to bona fide buyers.

It is this recovered body of work that forms, through the Mark Rothko Foundation created to manage the estate, the core of the roughly 1,000-work gift made to the National Gallery of Art in 1986 — the largest public collection in the world devoted to this painter, born directly out of an estate scandal rather than a simple act of patronage.

3. 1946-1948, from figures to multiforms

Personage Two, painted in 1946, predates the multiforms. This oil on canvas, about 1.4 m tall, comes from a period when Rothko was still working in a vein linked to Surrealism, before turning to the relations of space, colour and scale. Like the other canvases in the Mark Rothko Foundation’s gift, it went after the painter’s death to the Marlborough Gallery (1970), returned to the estate in 1977, then to the Foundation in 1979, before entering the National Gallery in 1986.

No. 9, painted in 1948, still belongs to Rothko's so-called "multiform" period: masses of colour with irregular outlines, not quite the rectangles that would become his signature a few months later. Vivid reds and oranges contrast here with deeper blues and blacks, their edges soft and blurred, giving the impression that the shapes float in front of one another rather than simply sitting side by side.

No. 10, from 1948, belongs to the “multiforms” painted between 1947 and 1949, the bridge to his mature style. On this vertical format (164 × 108 cm), thin washes of diluted paint make irregular forms that ebb and flow across the picture plane; the canvas marks the shift from a still Surrealist practice to a study of the relations between space, colour and scale.

4. 1956-1964, the method at its peak, then Harvard

An untitled canvas from 1956 shows Rothko at the height of his technique: multiple layers of paint and pigmented hide glue, applied as successive glazes, let the lower layers show faintly through the upper ones. The result is never a perfectly even field of colour — it seems to breathe, changing with the light and the distance from which it is seen. Rothko would repeat all his life that he was not painting abstract colour relationships but basic human emotions — tragedy, ecstasy, doom.

One of the 1962 sketches for the Harvard Murals (oil on canvas, about 206 × 186 cm) recalls a famous commission: in 1960 the economist Wassily Leontief suggested that Rothko paint canvases for the penthouse dining room of Holyoke Center at Harvard; he made them in 1961-1962 and they were installed in 1964. Removed within fifteen years, they had faded in the sunlight, the unstable red pigment Rothko used gradually altering.

No. 6 (?), from 1964, combines oil, acrylic and mixed media on a canvas measuring 2.36 by 1.93 metres; the question mark appears in the title as recorded in the museum’s catalogue. It was painted two years after the Harvard sketches.

5. 1969-1970, the final act

An untitled canvas from 1969 marks the start of the last chapter: bright colours give way to more muted ranges, foreshadowing the final series. An untitled canvas from 1970, known as "Black on Grey," painted in the very last months of his life, belongs to this final series of black-and-grey, black-and-brown compositions Rothko made as his health declined sharply. He himself said these canvases evoked death — he took his own life shortly after finishing one of them.

This last canvas followed an eventful path before reaching Washington: from the artist's studio to the Marlborough Gallery in 1970, back to the estate in 1977 after the lawsuit, then to the Mark Rothko Foundation in 1979, before the gift to the National Gallery in 1986 — a journey that sums up, on its own, the whole story told in this room.

How much time

Give your eyes time to adjust to the fields of color — these paintings, designed for long exhibition halls, read slowly, not at a glance. Allow about an hour for the eight canvases with their context.

Background on Rothko and the East Building tower — 5 minutes.
The will emptied of meaning — 6 minutes.
The 1975 lawsuit — 6 minutes.
Personage Two, 1946 — 5 minutes.
No. 9, 1948 — 6 minutes.
No. 10, 1948 — 5 minutes.
Untitled, 1956 — 5 minutes.
Sketch for the Harvard Murals, 1962 — 6 minutes.
No. 6 (?), 1964 — 5 minutes.
Untitled, 1969 — 5 minutes.
Untitled (Black on Grey), 1970 — 6 minutes.

Sources and verification

Checked against the official notices of the National Gallery of Art (nga.gov) and cross-checked with Wikipedia EN/FR.

Displays and room openings can change. Check the National Gallery of Art website on the day of your visit before following a route.

Continue your visit

National Gallery of Art, Washington

The only Leonardo in the Americas A hidden love note beneath the paint, and a painting cut short of its hands. A painting Stalin sold in secret How a Soviet sale of Hermitage masterpieces founded an American museum.

Listen to the commentary in the gallery

This route gives you a thread to follow. In front of an artwork, CulturAll adds the audio commentary: photograph the work or its label, listen, then ask your questions.

The Rothko Room, born out of an estate scandal