Wayne Thiebaud: American Still Life – The Courtauld Gallery, London (LAST CHANCE TO SEE)

One final last minute art dash for the winter exhibition season, and it’s to the delectable Wayne Thiebaud: American Still Life at the Courtauld Gallery.

Wayne Thiebaud at the Courtauld Gallery

It’s been a busy start to the year already. I always seem to get myself into difficulty at this time of year, getting behind on my exhibition visits and then rushing around everything before it closes. I apologise to you, dear readers, for not giving you very long in some cases to see some great exhibitions. Gilbert and George: 21st Century Pictures at the Hayward Gallery and Emily Kam Kngwarray at Tate Modern were both definitely worth a visit but have finished now. And there were others I wanted to see and didn’t make it to, like Egypt: Influencing British Design 1775 – 2025 at Sir John Soane’s Museum. Must try harder this year.

So this is the last of the LAST CHANCE TO SEE posts for January, I promise. And it’s a good one, with just under a week remaining to see it. Let’s start out by learning a bit more about the artist first, before we get stuck into the exhibition.

Morton Wayne Thiebaud (he later dropped the Morton) was born in 1920 in Mesa Arizona, the family moving the following year to Southern California. Morton Thiebaud Sr was at various times a bishop in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints as well as a Ford mechanic, and estate agent. Wayne (let’s start calling him that now so it doesn’t get confusing) started his artistic career early, but in a somewhat non-standard way. While still at school he apprenticed at Walt Disney Studios, later working as a cartoonist and designer. During WWII he was part of the First Motion Picture Unit of the United States Army Air Forces. He started at San Jose State College in 1949, completing his bachelors degree and then a master’s at Sacramento State College by 1952.

Thiebaud taught art at Sacramento City College and later the University of California, Davis, for over forty years. He spent time in New York City in 1956-7, becoming friends with Willem de Kooning and Franz Kline and seeing the work of Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns. He started a series of works based on displays of food at this time, focusing on their simplified shapes. Thiebaud had his first solo show in 1960, and then a break in 1962 in the form early Pop Art shows at the Sidney Janis Gallery in New York and Pasadena Art Museum. Although he did continue with the types of paintings he became best known for (and which are on display here), he did also transition into figure painting, and also learned etching. He died in 2021 at the age of 101.

American Still Life

While viewing this exhibition, I had one of those thoughts I’ve had before at the Courtauld Gallery. Namely, that while on the one hand I love the small Courtauld exhibition space, sometimes I’d like to go deeper into an exhibition’s theme. I thought that when I saw Abstract Erotic and felt I was only just getting to know the artists. Here, it was an appreciation for what’s on offer, but wishing I could see some of Thiebaud’s lesser-known series, too. This is actually the first UK museum show of his work, though. Perhaps a follow-up will satisfy that craving.

The exhibition under discussion today, American Still Life, certainly sates every craving when it comes to what Thiebaud is best known for. Shiny gumball machines, tasty pies, and cakes with thick impasto icing line the walls. Many are from the Wayne Thiebaud Foundation, with most of the loans coming from American collections. Taken together, they give a really good sense of the continuity of Thiebaud’s art over the years. A couple of early works are heavier and darker. But the uniformity of the latter works, with their light backgrounds and spare compositions, mirrors the subject matter. Food lined up on deli counters. Bright candy ready to be sold by the piece. A manifestation of the American dream, just with the dreaming Americans removed.

Thiebaud’s early career in advertising and commercial art certainly influenced him as an artist. It’s hard not to start drawing mental comparisons with Andy Warhol. But was Thiebaud part of the Pop Art movement? If you asked him, it seems he probably would have said no. But he was certainly on the periphery, as those early breakthrough exhibitions show. Like some Pop artists, Thiebaud’s work plays with notions of consumerism. It has the heavy outlines and faithful lettering of advertisements. But it’s also more painterly in a traditional sense. No mechanised production here à la Andy Warhol’s Factory. Thiebaud clearly valued the sensuality of a good brush stroke.

Reflections on the Exhibition

And it’s that, really, that I enjoyed most about Wayne Thiebaud: American Still Life. Reproductions of his works don’t do justice to them. Up close, the paint is beautifully thick and glossy. The impasto sits thick on the cakes, like icing. You can see each brush stroke, and how it contributes to the individuality of the seemingly identical objects. These really are still lifes reimagined. The exhibition text likens Thiebaud’s 1963 Delicatessen Counter to Manet’s A Bar at the Folies-Bergère in the permanent collection nearby. I see more of a link to the careful, realist still lifes of Baroque painter Juan Sanchez Cotán.

As first UK museum shows go, this one isn’t bad. Like I said, I’d like to go further, to see some of those figure paintings, for instance. But you have to start somewhere. And seeing some of Thiebaud’s favourite subjects, seeing how he handled the paint so they seem to pop off the canvas, was a revelation. Plus this is one of those exhibitions I counsel people to see anyway as it’s such a great assemblage of works from outside the UK. International loans can only be getting trickier these days so let’s take these opportunities while we can!

I look forward to seeing what else the Courtauld Gallery has in store in 2026. I still think it’s at its best when showing works of a similar period or background to the Courtauld collection itself. But these little introductory exhibitions are like art history primers, giving just enough to whet one’s appetite for more.

Salterton Arts Review’s rating: 3.5/5

Wayne Thiebaud: American Still Life on until 18 January 2026