Mark Rothko was born Marcus Rothkowitz in 1903 in Dvinsk, Russia. His father was a pharmacist. As a child he spoke Hebrew and Russian until he was ten years old; in 1913 he and his two sisters, Anna and Sonia, came to Portland, Oregon, where their parents had preceded them. They wore labels explaining that they did not speak English; he enrolled in Immigrant School. In 1921 he won a scholarship to Yale University; he was one of three immigrant seniors to get into Yale. He planned on becoming a labor leader. In 1923 he left Yale, moving to New York to work as a bookkeeper for an uncle. Somewhere along the way he disavowed his faith, struggling with a cultural identity developed against a hostile backdrop of...