Woman Reading c. 1933

Mark Rothko made this oil on canvas painting, “Woman Reading,” and it’s interesting to see how he approached mark-making in this early piece. There's a real process at work here, a feeling of the artist figuring things out as he goes, which is something I always look for in a painting. The material aspect of the work is really evident. The paint is applied fairly thinly, almost like a wash in places, but there's still a visible texture, a sense of the brush moving across the canvas. Look at the way the light hits the side of her face and how the artist has used short strokes of colour to create form, it's really amazing. It reminds me a little of Vuillard, with that intimate, domestic feeling. But of course Rothko would later move away from figurative work entirely, embracing pure abstraction. It's fascinating to see the seeds of that later style in this early painting, and just goes to show how the conversation of art is always changing.