Throughout the 1950s he produced a series of masterpieces, using a method that involved staining his canvas with watercolour paper and then building up scumbled skins of colour to create his signature vibrato effect. At first, the predominance of Mediterranean hues gives these canvases a glowing, joyous intensity. “No 8″ (White Stripe) 1958, for example, places a white band between raspberry and pomegranate horizontal panels against a blush-pink ground; “No 17″ 1958 balances cypress-green and midnight-blue rectangles within a narrow border, whose dense cobalt recalls the blue of a Renaissance Madonna’s robe.

To gaze on these canvases is to perform a meditation. The frail, nuanced pyramid of shades draws the eye inwards until all conventional sense of colour is lost, and what remains is a light that flutters and vibrates with metaphysical intensity. Fuelling their power is Rothko’s architectural mastery: seams, borders, panel sizes – all balanced with magnificently confident precision.