Wayne Thiebaud

Private collects ion, California (gift of the artist)
By descent to the present owner from the above

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Newport Beach, Newport Harbor Art Museum; Milwaukee Art Museum; Columbus Museum of Art; Kansas City, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Thiebaud, September 1985 - November 1986, p. 32, illustrated

This work is in very good condition overall. The surface is bright, fresh and clean. There is evidence of light wear and handling along the edges, which has resulted in a very minor, pinpoint area of paint loss at the lower right corner. Upon close inspection there are a few areas of hairline craquelure in the pink area, all of which appear to be stable. Under Ultraviolet light inspection, there are pinpoint spots along the edges of the canvas, a 1-inch vertical line at the bottom right corner, a 1-inch spot 4-inches from the left edge and 4-inches from top edge, and a pinpoint spot to the left of the center of the canvas, all of which fluoresce darkly and appear to be the result of inpainting. Framed.
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From vitrines of cakes and candies to California street scenes, Wayne Thiebaud’s lush canvases of quotidian objects that occupy modern-day America provide a refreshing twist to traditional representational imagery. As a California native, Thiebaud’s innovative approach to figuration was influenced by the Abstract Expressionist movement in New York as well as the representational works of both the 19th Century Italian Macchiaiolo movement and the contemporary Bay Area figurative painters. Thiebaud applied lavish strokes of paint onto the canvas, highly reminiscent of de Kooning’s juicy paint application and gestures, yet places the objects above all as the central and most important component of his compositions, like a still-life from the Old Masters.

Of particular note was the profound impact that artist Richard Diebenkorn had on Thiebaud. Like Thiebaud, Diebenkorn was a Bay Area painter attempting to find the perfect balance between abstraction and figuration. According to Karen Tsujimoto who interviewed Thiebaud, the artist saw Diebenkorn’s solo exhibition at the California Palace of the Legion of Honor in San Francisco in 1960 and recalled that “the exhibition was a riveting experience, and he visited many t.mes s to make sketches of the paintings on view. What intrigued him about Diebenkorn’s work was the calculated effort to control and organize the compositions” (Exh. Cat., San Francisco Museum of Art (and travelling), Wayne Thiebaud, 1985-1986, p. 32).

Thiebaud was particularly struck by Diebenkorn’s Girl and Three Coffee Cups, notably “its underlying abstract structure and the studied movement and countermovement of the composition… how the dense huddle of coffee cups is relieved by the open expanses of the tabletops and walls” (ibid., p. 33). Indeed, such experimentation with new forms of representation working within the still life genre resonates in Coffee which was painted one year later in 1961. The tonal contrasts, paint handling, and suggestive composition of Coffee no doubt add to the allure of Thiebaud's work, mystifying what was once a commonplace object, a quality that the artist carried with him from this early moment to his later career.