Elizabeth Brown; New Orleans Muralist

Her work is found in the Army and Navy Club in the District, the Powhatan Nursing Home in Falls Church, St. John's Episcopal Church nursery in McLean and numerous private homes. She also created a mural for the Commander's Palace restaurant in New Orleans, which was a permanent fixture in the Garden District until the building was damaged by Hurricane Katrina.

The murals, with extravagant flora and pools of water near the baseboards, would sometimes include fanciful wildlife, her daughter Charlotte Chute deButts of Arlington said, describing her mother's "fantastic birds, not something you could find in a bird book." When a household where the mural was being painted included children, Mrs. Brown would discreetly tuck in a few bunnies.

She learned her craft at the knee of her mother, who had studied with renowned artist William Woodward at Newcomb College in New Orleans. A native of New Orleans, Mrs. Brown moved to Texas to live with relatives during the Depression and then followed her mother and sister to Atlanta, where she attended the University of Georgia.

After college, she became a spotter for the Civil Air Patrol before returning to New Orleans. She married a Navy officer and lived in Bethesda, Alexandria and New York. In New York, she worked briefly as a volunteer at local hospitals and then became a fashion model. Upon her return to New Orleans in 1953, she worked as a department store model until 1960, when she and a friend started a business creating opulent floral hats and veils for debutantes, brides and their families.

Her millinery career lasted until 1970, when she began studying art with Vera Reineke, then the leading muralist in New Orleans. Mrs. Brown literally held Reineke's ladder and studied her technique from the drop cloth. When Reineke died during an influenza outbreak, Mrs. Brown was prepared to step in.

She and her mother created the stencils for her first job at the family's dining room table, and for years, Mrs. Brown kept a handwritten list of her patrons and completed works taped to the back of her bedroom door.

Her work was well received; she painted art in the elevators and a mural in the dining room at Pontchartrain Hotel in New Orleans, and after completing a mural in the home of a well-known local arts writer, the hostess gave a vernissage on her behalf at its completion.

Mrs. Brown moved to McLean in 1982 and continued her art, working in numerous private homes. She had, in 1977, painted a mural for a home on Chain Bridge Road, which was part of the National Symphony Orchestra's Decorators' Show House. The home was later purchased by a Saudi prince.

She was a member of St. John's Episcopal Church, the Washington Club, the Daughters of the American Revolution, National Society Daughters of Founders and Patriots, and the Colonial Dames of America.

Her marriages to retired Navy Rear Adm. Malcolm Duncan Sylvester, William Staake Chute, Robert William Hadden and Kenneth Gordon Brown ended in divorce. A daughter from her first marriage, Maryann Whitmire Sylvester, died in 1977.

Survivors include her fiance, Dr. Donald Datlow of McLean; a daughter from her first marriage, Elizabeth Sylvester Simons of Arlington; a daughter from her second marriage; a sister, Mary Louise Whitmire Pfeifer of Falls Church; five grandchildren; and four great-grandchildren.