[Standing woman wearing hat]

This ink drawing relates to a canvas from the same period that was exhibited as Portrait of Mary in The First Annual Exhibition of the Federation of Modern Painters and Sculptors, March 9–23, 1941, at the Riverside Museum, New York (fig. 1). It is possible that the subject of this portrait is Mary Viders, who knew Rothko well late 1930s and early 1940s. Her pose, with her hand on her abdomen, alludes to the iconography of pregnancy. Viders gave birth to her first daughter, Judy Golden, on October 20, 1940 [Judy Golden, interviewed by Laili Nasr, July 12, 2016].