This watercolor of two female bathers was almost certainly painted in Gloucester, Massachusetts, during the summer of 1934 when Rothko and his wife Edith Sachar (1912–1981) vacationed there with the Averys—Milton (1885–1965), Sally, and March—and Esther and Adolph Gottlieb (1903–1974). This watercolor relates to contemporaneous figural groups of semiclad or nude females that Rothko painted on canvas (figs. 1–3).