[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 this drawing. It has been suggested that the drawing is a study for Panel One of the mural cycle, the left canvas of the triptych (figs. 2, 3) [Annie Wilker and Jens Stenger, Mark Rothko’s Mural Sketches: Materials and Use / Scientific Analysis (Cambridge, MA, 2009), 7]. The inscription “First” in graphite in Rothko’s hand appears to support this observation, but the composition, in fact, resembles more closely the canvas referred to as Panel Six (fig. 4), which Rothko shipped to the Holyoke Center but ultimately decided not to include in the room. Perhaps Rothko initially conceived of Panel Six as the left panel of the triptych but changed his mind once on site in January 1963. The dimensions of Panel Six are closer to those of Panel Three, the right canvas of the triptych, than to Panel One, and installing Panel Six as the left side of the triptych would have produced a more symmetrical composition, something that might not have satisfied the artist in situ. The pale pink watercolor Rothko used in this drawing suggests that it was made at the same time and with the same brush as a closely related drawing, [Harvard mural study], which includes seemingly accidental traces of the same pale pink watercolor. 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.