, 2008. Fibreglass stone and airplane. National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa. Purchased 2011. Photo © Roman März](/images/content/menuSeeGallery.png)
Benjamin West
The Death of General Wolfe (Detail), 1770
oil on canvas
152.6 x 214.5 cm
Transfer from the Canadian War Memorials, 1921 (Gift of the 2nd Duke of Westminster, England, 1918)
National Gallery of Canada (no. 8007)
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No. 16, 1957
Mark Rothko
Russian, American, 1903
- 1970
oil on canvas
265.5 x 293 cm
Purchased 1993
National Gallery of Canada (no. 36856)
© Estate of Mark Rothko / ARS (New York) / SODRAC (Montréal)
Mark Rothko began making his characteristic paintings of large floating rectangles of colour ten years before he painted this work. He not only radically simplified his compositions at that time, but abandoned conventional titles in order to avoid all references to the everyday world. However, he did not propose to eliminate subject matter from his art: the immediacy of his abstract forms sought to evoke the human condition. Rothko believed that by destroying illusion, truth would be revealed.
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