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<div>When forty rural Sacramento Delta landscapes by Wayne Thiebaud were unveiled at a San Francisco gallery opening in November 1997, attendees were amazed by paintings they never anticipated. This new frontier betrayed neither Thiebaud’s mastery of confectionary-shop colors nor his impeccable eye for formal relationships. Rather, his admirers were shocked to learn that all but seven of these forty interpretations had been completed in just two years. As his son Paul recalled, “the refinements of my father’s artistic process were ever changing in a chameleon-like frenzy.” The new direction had proved an exhilarating experience, each painting an affirmation of Wayne Thiebaud’s impassioned response to the fields and levees of the local environment he dearly loved.   </div>
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<br><div>Viewed from the perspective of a bird or a plane, "The Riverhouse" is an agrarian tapestry conceived with a kaleidoscopic range of shapes and simple forms; fields striped with furrows or striated fans, deliriously colored parallelograms and trapezoids, an orchard garnished pizza-shaped wedge, and a boldly limned river, the lifeline of a thirsty California central valley largely dependent upon transported water. "The Riverhouse" is a painting that ‘moves’ between seamlessly shifting planes of aerial mapping that recalls Richard Diebenkorn’s stroke of insight when he took his first commercial flight the spring of 1951, and those partitions engaging a more standard vanishing point perspective. Thiebaud explained his process as “orchestrating with as much variety and tempo as I can.” Brightly lit with a fauve-like intensity, "The Riverhouse" is a heady concoction of vibrant pigment and rich impasto, one that recalls his indebtedness to Pierre Bonnard whose color Thiebaud referred to as “a bucket full of hot coals and ice cubes.” Among his many other influences, the insertion of objects — often tiny — that defy a rational sense of scale that reflects his interest in Chinese landscape painting.  As always, his mastery as a painter recalls his titular pies and cakes with their bewitching rainbow-like halos and side-by-side colors of equal intensity but differing in hues to create the vibratory effect of an aura, what Thiebaud explained “denotes an attempt to develop as much energy and light and visual power as you can.” </div>
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<br><div>Thiebaud’s Sacramento Delta landscapes are an integral and important part of his oeuvre. Paintings such as "The Riverhouse" rival the best abstract art of the twentieth century. His good friend, Willem de Kooning thought so, too.</div>
FEATURED
WAYNE THIEBAUD
The Riverhouse
2001/2005
18 x 35 3/4 in.
oil on canvas

<div><font face=Lato size=3 color=black>Wayne Thiebaud’s <em>Boston Cremes</em> (1970–71) forms part of the artist’s portfolio <em>Seven Still Lifes and a Silver Landscape</em>. Signed and dated by the artist in 1970, the print has not previously appeared at auction. Thiebaud, a central figure in Post-War American art, is celebrated for his luminous depictions of everyday objects, most notably desserts and consumer goods, that situate him at the intersection of Pop Art’s engagement with mass culture and a painterly sensibility indebted to Impressionism.</font></div>
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<br><div><font face=Lato size=3 color=black>Decadent rows of chocolate-topped pastries are presented in neat sequence, echoing the logic of bakery displays while transforming a familiar confection into a cultural icon. Within the apparent uniformity, subtle variations in contour, texture, and shading emerge, inviting close attention to the individuality of each form.</font></div>
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<br><div><font face=Lato size=3 color=black>Rendered in bright, pastel grounds offset by rich browns, yellows, and creams, the image exemplifies Thiebaud’s distinctive use of color, particularly his shadows infused with unexpected blues and purples. These chromatic choices lend vibrancy and a sense of light to ordinary subjects, elevating them into objects of contemplation.</font></div>
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<br><div><font face=Lato size=3 color=black>At once nostalgic and critical, <em>Boston Cremes</em> reflects the artist’s engagement with American consumer culture and his distinctive balance between realism and stylization. Transforming familiar confections into enduring symbols of American life, the work evokes memory while challenging the boundaries between fine art and popular imagery.</font></div>
WAYNE THIEBAUD
Boston Cremes
1970
13 1/4 x 29 in.
color lithograph

<div><font face=Lato size=3 color=black>Wayne Thiebaud’s <em>Breakfast</em>, from an edition of 50, demonstrates the artist’s signature blend of Pop-inflected realism and painterly intimacy. Executed in colored drypoint, the work captures the simple subject of a morning meal with a remarkable freshness: hatching lines soften and blur the composition, creating a pastel-like effect that distinguishes it from the crispness of commercial print design. Though slightly faded, the impression retains the playful chromatic sensibility and softly modeled shadowing that became hallmarks of Thiebaud’s style.</font></div>
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<br><div><font face=Lato size=3 color=black>Since the early 1960s, Thiebaud has been celebrated for his depictions of food—cakes, pies, gumball machines, and diner counters—rendered not as literal meals but as cultural icons, at once nostalgic and idealized. In <em>Breakfast</em>, the modest meal is transformed into a subject of contemplation and delight, celebrating the pleasures of everyday American life while evoking memory and desire. The combination of precision and informality speaks to Thiebaud’s ability to merge the immediacy of drawing with the enduring resonance of painting.</font></div>
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<br><div><font face=Lato size=3 color=black>Institutional recognition of the work’s importance is reflected in its inclusion within the National Gallery of Art, Washington, affirming its role within Thiebaud’s larger project of elevating common objects into images of enduring cultural significance.</font></div>
WAYNE THIEBAUD
Breakfast
1995
18 x 23 5/8 in.
colored etching and drypoint

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