Painter William Theophilus Brown dies at age 92

SAN FRANCISCO — William Theophilus Brown, a painter who enjoyed success for more than half-a-century and was closely associated with the San Francisco Bay area's "figurative" movement, has died at age 92.

Gallery owner Thomas Reynolds told the San Francisco Chronicle (http://bit.ly/zRdvAj ) that Brown died Wednesday at a San Francisco retirement community. His partner, the artist Paul Wonner, died in 2008.

Trained at Yale University and the University of California, Berkeley, Brown's first solo exhibition was at the Felix Landau Gallery in Los Angeles in 1957. His paintings have been shown at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, D.C.

Art historians recognize the figurative movement as a period during the mid-20th century when portrait artists moved away from extreme abstractionism and included some realism.

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Information from: San Francisco Chronicle, http://www.sfgate.com