[Harvard mural study]

In 1960 Wassily Leontief, head of the Harvard Society of Fellows, invited Rothko to consider donating a selection of works to Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Negotiations began in earnest in the fall of 1961 and continued into early 1962, at which point Rothko began work on a mural cycle conceived for the penthouse dining room of the university’s recently built Holyoke Center (now renamed the Richard A. and Susan F. Smith Campus Center). On December 27, 1962, six large canvases—now referred to as Panel One through Panel Six of the Harvard cycle—were delivered to the Holyoke Center (Anfam 737–742). In January 1963, Rothko traveled to Cambridge and selected and arranged Panel One through Panel Five in the room, three of them as a triptych (Anfam 737–739, fig. 1). Rothko ultimately decided not to include Panel Six in the arrangement. Panel One through Panel Five were formally installed in 1964.

In preparation for this work, Rothko had moved into a new studio at 1458 First Avenue in New York at the beginning of January 1962 and had temporary walls constructed to replicate the layout of the Holyoke Center dining room. He was reported to have been at work on the cycle, presumably painting on canvas, by February 1962. In addition to the six canvases that were delivered to Harvard in December 1962, he made at least six studies on canvas (Anfam 731–736), several at a slightly smaller scale [James E. B. Breslin, Mark Rothko: A Biography (Chicago and London, 1993), 649n19; Karyn Esielonis, “The History of Rothko’s Harvard Murals,” in Marjorie B. Cohn, ed., Mark Rothko’s Harvard Murals (Cambridge, 1988), 12n13].

Before initiating work on canvas—presumably during the first two months of 1962, given the ongoing negotiations with Harvard—Rothko made a group of preliminary studies on paper, including the current drawing, which corresponds closely to the central panel of the triptych (figs. 2, 3). The ink stain on the right edge of this sheet links it to three untitled drawings closely related in style and facture (see NGA 1986.56.321, 1986.56.641, 1986.56.639), indicating that all were made on sheets, possibly contiguous, from the same sketchpad. The stains probably derive from wet ink along the lower edge of [Untitled] when it was created. See Related Works on Paper for additional watercolor and ink studies for the Harvard project.

Note: All six panels of the Harvard murals cycle that were delivered to the Holyoke Center have undergone a color shift since their creation due to overexposure and the presence of light-sensitive lithol red pigment. The university removed them from view in 1979; they have rarely been displayed since. Unless otherwise noted, images of the panels reflect the current state of the works; images that reflect the original state of the works are marked as such and are from digitally restored scans of 1964 Ektachrome transparencies.