Number 19

Number 19 — Mark Rothko. 1949.

Medium: Oil on canvas. Dimensions: 172.8 × 101.8 cm (68 × 40 1/8 in.).

Collection record: Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago. Museum connection according to this source; current display unverified.

Like many of the New York School painters of the 1940s, Mark Rothko was largely influenced by Surrealism, creating symbolic abstractions comprised of biomorphic and mythological forms. By 1947 he abandoned such suggestive imagery and began working exclusively with how ideas of color, light, and space could be manifested in paint. Number 19 follows the characteristic format of his transitional canvases, in which loosely defined shapes hover against a thinly brushed background. Color had become a defining force for Rothko, as had the atmospheric—even ghostly—layering of oil paint, which would lead to his signature color-field of the 1950s.

Description: © Art Institute of Chicago, original record, CC BY 4.0. HTML formatting removed; wording retained. Other artwork metadata: CC0.

Source: official collection record. Metadata selected and normalized by Artline from the source export, accessed 10 September 2026; no museum endorsement. Reproduction rights are separate.