Before his sudden and mysterious death earlier this month, Michael Brown was known for drug-addled public outbursts and continually violent confrontations with women.

But recent inventories of the disgraced hand doctor's homes in Houston, New York and Miami Beach reveal that Brown maintained a softer side with an apparent passion for art . . . and not only as a collector, but as a budding artist himself.

At his Bayou City manse, the Brown Hand Center founder presented himself as a sort of tough guy with occasional bursts of whimsy. Appraisals filed with a federal bankruptcy court list Italian sports cars and a cache of 100-plus guns as well as a 12-foot stuffed grizzly and a personal slushy machine.

Brown's New York image, however, was bolstered by more than a million dollars of fine art and antiques, many of which are still missing. More than a dozen paintings and prints (mostly nudes) by the likes of Picasso, Chagall and Matisse adorned the walls of his Central Park bachelor pad alongside pieces of 18th- and 19th-century European furniture.

Meanwhile, in Miami, Brown was all about exploring his creative side with a longstanding interest in photography.

The hobby that came to light in March when lawyers for the doctor's estranged wife Rachel Brown accused him of taking pictures of "young women" on two yachts he recently purchased to start an apparent photography business. Attorneys rolled their eyes in court as Brown claimed his "forte" was landscape photography, not portraits.

An inventory of his Miami Beach mansion show a dedicated "camera room" as well as 20 photos signed and dated by Michael Brown himself. Though no images are provided with the legal documents, most have titles like Marshmallow Sky and Isla Palma, suggesting that Brown's forte was landscape photography, after all . . . Others like Reclining Female in Red leave a little more to the imagination.