Astronaut Artist Alan Bean Dies

Alan Bean, an Apollo astronaut who was the fourth man to walk on the moon, died Saturday at the age of 86 in a Houston hospital. Bean was the lunar module pilot on Apollo 12 and also commanded the second crewed mission to Skylab in July of 1973. He was a Navy Test Pilot School graduate and had 5,500 hours in 27 different aircraft types. Bean was widely respected as a pilot and astronaut but was equally known as a space-themed artist.

On his retirement from NASA in 1981 he started turning out works that incorporated moon dust and Apollo memorabilia in the paintings. Bean was "one of the great renaissance men of his generation -- engineer, fighter pilot, astronaut and artist," said fellow astronaut Harrison Schmitt. His trips to space prompted his surprise turn of career. "Every artist has the Earth or their imaginations to inspire their paintings," he told The New York Times in 1994. "I've got the Earth and my imagination, and I'm the first to have the moon, too."