Theodore Wores was born on August 1, 1859, in
San Francisco, son of Joseph Wores and Gertrude Liebke. His father worked as a hat manufacturer in San Francisco. Wores began his art training at age twelve in the studio of
Joseph Harrington, who taught him color, composition, drawing and perspective. When the
California School of Design (later known as San Francisco Art Institute) opened in 1874, Wores was one of the first pupils to enroll. After one year at that school under the landscape painter
Virgil Macey Williams, he continued his art education at
the Royal Academy in Munich where he spent six years. He also painted with
William Merritt Chase and
Frank Duveneck. Wores returned to San Francisco in 1881. He went to Japan for two extended visits and had successful exhibitions of his Japanese paintings in New York City and London, where he became friends with
James Abbott McNeill Whistler and
Oscar Wilde. He visited
Hawaii and
Samoa in 1901 to 1902 and established a home in San Francisco about 1906. He visited Hawaii for a second time in 1910 to 1911. He was married in 1910, in San Francisco to Carolyn Bauer. For the remainder of his career, Wores painted the coast on the western edge of San Francisco. He died from a heart attack in San Francisco on September 11, 1939. ==Collections==