[Bathers on the beach]

Date
Watermark
Grumbacher (embossed stamp): ALL PURE / LINEN / M.GRUMBACHER
Dimensions
11 5/16 x 15 5/16 in. (28.7 x 38.9 cm)
Estate/Inventory Number
65
Collection
Collection of Kate Rothko Prizel. © Kate Rothko Prizel and Christopher Rothko
Remarks
This watercolor of a group of bathers on the beach was almost certainly painted in Gloucester, Massachusetts, during the summer of 1934 when Rothko and his wife Edith vacationed there with the Averys—Milton (1885–1965), Sally, and March—and Esther and Adolph Gottlieb (1903–1974). Gottlieb recalled that he and Avery would “go out and make sketches of Gloucester Harbor or people on the beach . . . and then go home and paint them” [Miriam Roberts, Adolph Gottlieb (Omaha, NE, 1980), 8]. The current work appears to be just such a sketch.
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