William Theophilus Brown (American(1919 - 2012)
Allegory, 1974
mixed media on paper
signed and dated lower right: Wm Theo Brown 74
11 1/8 x 14 7/8 in. (28.26 x 37.78 cm.), Frame: 19 x 22 3/4 x 1 in. (48.26 x 57.79 x 2.54 cm.)
Collection of Barbara Poe Levee, Los Angeles, California
Private Collection, Colorado
Private Collection, New Mexico
About the artist
William Theophilus Brown (American, 1919-2012) William Theophilus Brown was born in Moline, Illinois, and came from a long line of intellectuals who socialized with authors such as Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David
Thoreau. He studied piano at Yale and graduated in 1941, at which time he was drafted into World War II. Following his discharge, he studied painting at the University of California, Berkeley and moved between the artistic centers of New York City and Paris. During these travels, Brown met a large number of accomplished artists, including Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, Alberto Giacometti, and Willem de Kooning. His growing success, as well
as his continued relationships with other talented artists, all contributed to Brown becoming recognized as a prominent member of the Bay Area Figurative Movement.
About the artwork
in the late 60's through the 70's Brown's oeuvre stretched to a wide variety of compositions of figures and animals in landscapes turned toward the allegorical substance employed by Picasso, de Chirico or Balthus. It is this facet of figurative painting that lies at the center of his work and it is beneath these mixtures of past moments and poetic excursions that stays in your memory.
The pale gray greens the powdery pinks and distilled drawings are reminiscent of Picasso Saltimbanques from his early period. The specificity of the moment with the dog frozen in time inside the uncolored capsule, the bat wings following the precise line of the mountains behind demonstrates the artist skill as a draftsman ans his deftness at carefully edited descriptive painting.