SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — 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. He was 92.

Brown died Wednesday in his apartment at a San Francisco high- rise retirement community, gallery owner Thomas Reynolds told the San Francisco Chronicle. He said Brown painted and took art classes until the end of his life.

Brown’s partner of nearly 50 years, the celebrated artist Paul Wonner, died in 2008.

Brown was part of the figurative movement that art historians recognize as a period during the mid-20th century when artists moved away from extreme abstractionism and included some realism in their portraits, landscapes and still-lifes. The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, D.C., and the M. H. de Young Memorial Museum in San Francisco are among the institutions that exhibit his paintings.

He was born in Illinois and trained at Yale University and the University of California, Berkeley.

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