Painting till the end . . .

Byron remained active into his early 90s, but began to fade in his final years. He died several months before his 95th birthday. Even so—and despite a succession of mini-strokes (TIAs) affecting his speech—he was painting almost daily until the week before he died. Theispainting of San Francisco was done during his final year. Note on the back indicates that it was framed the month that he died. He’d now and again have works that he completed framed because he thought it special and wanted to display it in his apartment—he evidently liked this one. After his death, my mother had this one on the wall in her apartment for the next decade.

Below are other works Byron painted when he was 93 and 94.

The last time he went to New Orleans (to attend his sister’s funeral), he asked to drive by all of the houses in which he lived in New Orleans. He made sketches of each one, and then made paintings of some back in Baton Rouge. He spent much of his childhood here, in this house at 2623 Jefferson Ave. His grandparents and a great-grandmother lived in the apartment downstairs; he and his family lived in the other upstairs. A single-family home now, there were two entrances back in the 1920s and 30s.