During the summer of 1968, while vacationing in Provincetown MA and convalescing from a dissecting aortic aneurysm that left him in a deep depression that ended in his suicide in Feb 1970, Mark Rothko took up painting in acrylic again; it was a medium he had begun to experiment with after making the Houston chapel murals, which impress their solemn monumentality on the viewer. As late works, made mostly throughout 1969, the "Brown on Gray" acrylic paintings on paper might appear to express the conditions of Rothko's death: aware of the fragility of his health, both physically and psychologically, the artist lived out the remainder of his life in recognition of the fact that he could die at a moment's notice. Here, Werschkul discusses how the depression or the melancholia affected Rothko and his later works.