‘An elegant and irreverent painter’ February 8, 2012 § 2
Comments William Theophilus Brown April 7, 1919 – February 8,
2012 By JULIAN GUTHRIE San Francisco Chronicle William
Theophilus Brown, an elegant and irreverent American painter and
member of the venerated figurative movement who met and
befriended some of history’s great artists, from Pablo Picasso
to Igor Stravinsky, died Wednesday [February 8, 2012] at his
home in San Francisco. He was 92. Mr. Brown, who lived in the
opulent San Francisco Towers, which he christened the
“Versailles of retirement communities,” was painting until the
end, said his friend and gallerist Thomas Reynolds. He had a
studio a few blocks from his home and continued to participate
in drawing sessions. “Theophilus Brown was one of those rare
artists who was successful at every stage of his career,”
Reynolds said. “And he was always at the center of the action —
in France with Picasso, in New York with (Mark) Rothko and
(Willem) de Kooning, in California with the Bay Area figurat