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in the late '40s and the 550s so that he is a great original painter. He may have relatively few notes, but he has a great originality at present. His paintings are very uneven in quality, but some of them are really quite superb. There are two on the same theme now on sale at Park-Bernet. I wish you'd go look at them. So I'm thinking about buying one.

He's a very candid and pleasant man, rather small; he seems to be between 55 and 60. He's very sophisticated and not at all the same kind of emotional, ventursome personality-- he doesn't make the impression of ventursomeness and emotionalism that Klein gave one.

At the same time in '61, Bernard Rice took Mr. Stevenson and me to see Rothko. He was painting in an enormous studio above a flophouse in the Bowery where the smell of urine was absolutely sickening as you went upstairs to the studio. You could practically not breathe. But they were very high ceilings and there were these enormous paintings that he was doing for the Four Seasons restaurant. He decided, however, not to give them to the Four Seasons because he thought that it was too comercial or something to have them in a restaurant. He's very difficult with his paintings.

Governor Stevenson was quite bewildered by his paintings also, and I saw one that I liked at that time, but I didn't buy it. A couple of years passed and I did go and buy two from