The project took him nearly two years to complete, as he altogether restarted and repainted the murals several times. As Rothko supposedly told John Fischer in 1959 while aboard the USS Constitution and on his way to Italy: “So far I’ve painted three sets of panels for this Seagram job. The first on didn’t turn out right, so I sold the panels separately as individual paintings. The second time I got the basic idea, but began to modify it as I went along—because, I guess, I was afraid of being too stark. When I realized my mistake, I started again, and this time I’m holding tight to the original conception” (Rothko and López-Remiro 131). Rothko was not pleased with the first set of murals, and the second set laid the groundwork for the final successful series of murals (Rothko and Glimcher 65). With so many canvases painted, it is hard to know, in the present day, which paintings actually belong in the intended mural group. “It would be very difficult to say that one was intended as a part of the mural and one was not. There were, even given the exact dimensions, three separate sets of murals, two of which were rejected, plus a lot of individual paintings that were done in almost exact terms” (Rothko and Glimcher 68). While we can only speculate how many canvases Rothko intended to hang and how many were actually made for the project, we do know that Rothko was deeply conflicted about the appearance of the paintings he was creating.

In fact, Rothko was so morally conflicted over the commission itself that he eventually abandoned the project in 1959. “Upon completion of the third and final set, Rothko refused to deliver the works to the Seagram Building and cancelled the commission” (Rothko and Glimcher 65). However, his reasons for resigning the commission remain largely debated into the present day. One claim is that Rothko did not know that the murals were envisioned for the Four Seasons Restaurant (Clearwater and Rothko 44), and perhaps thought they were for some other part of the Seagram building. However, it was only after dining at the restaurant itself that he decided to pull his works from the commission (Breslin 404-6). “He decided that this series of canvases, on which he had spent so much labor and emotion, amounted to a good deal more than a malicious gesture to rich gourmands, and deserved a better setting than a fashionable dining room” (Rothko and López-Remiro 136). But as we will probably never know what his reasons for giving up the Seagram commission actually were, the bigger question remaining is what would happen to these paintings after he did so.