[Woman braiding her hair]

This watercolor shares a subject with a canvas of c. 1934, Untitled (girl with pigtails) (fig. 1), and is a variation on a subject that Rothko had treated slightly earlier: a woman combing her hair (fig. 2). A green sofa as well as a green armchair like the one in this watercolor appear in several works on paper and canvas made at Rothko’s Brooklyn apartment (1000 Park Place), where he and his wife Edith lived from the fall of 1933 to late 1935 (fig. 3 and see Related Works on Paper). Edith reportedly favored a long braid.