Observations about Wayne Thiebaud at the Courtauld Gallery

The major revelation of this exhibition is how Thiebaud's painting is as luscious as his subject matter. Many images of his work o date appear to flatten the profound surface textures contained in his paintings - but his brush marks are fully loaded and aim to impress.

I love Wayne Thiebaud's artwork on a lot of different levels and will always recommend that people go to see exhibitions of his artwork. 

Could be because I'm a bit of a foodie! Mostly it's because of how he visualises and draws and paints. 

Close up of "Pie Rows"

Wayne Thiebaud, Pie Rows, 1961, 

Oil on canvas, 46 x 66cm, 

Collection of the Wayne Thiebaud Foundation. 

© Wayne Thiebaud/VAGA at ARS, NY and DACS, London 2025.

Image: Katherine Tyrrell (Making A Mark)

I got my review "knickers in a twist" trying to think about HOW to review the first ever exhibition of his work at the Courtauld Gallery in London after I first saw it last month - mainly because it was right in the middle of an exhibition opening blitz.  (I think I did five in just over a week).

Partly because I couldn't find my notes from the PV! (Then I finally remembered - they were digital! Thank you Apple Notes!)

Mainly because I've not written a whole lot before about why I like his work so much. There again there are these posts.... 

• my obit post An appreciation of Wayne Thiebaud (1920 - 2021) after he died age 101 on Christmas Day in 2021.
• More Wayne Thibaud: "This for you is my world to look at" (2019)

For me this is a bit of a click and salivate post! In all honesty written entirely for me - for looking at from time to time - rather than sharing with any of you - but you can look too! ;)

• and finally Wayne Thiebaud working on etchings (video) (2019) age 99!

So here goes....

Wayne Thiebaud at the Courtauld Gallery

This is very much a "one time only in your lifetime" sort of exhibition!

• It's not just the first ever exhibition of Wayne Thiebaud's still like artworks at the Courtauld. 
• This is the first ever serious museum exhibition of his iconic and vibrant still lifes of post-war American subjects anywhere in the UK. 
• AND it's taken over 60 years to get them here. It's probably going to be at least that many years before they come back again.

View of three of Wayne Thiebaud's works
- with "Cakes" in the middle and "Three Machines" on the right
Image: Katherine Tyrrell (Making A Mark)

We've occasionally seen examples of his paintings in the UK - but never a solo show and never of the subject matter for which he is famed and never so many!

This is what some of the newspaper reviews have said.
 

The New York Times called him “the Edward Hopper of the dinette tabletop”

I'm going to get the basics out of the way first.

There are actually TWO EXHIBITIONS.

• one of (colourful) paintings and 
• one of (mainly monochrom) drawings and etchings.

The first is called Wayne Thiebaud American Still Life.  (the paintings)

Venue: Denise Coates Exhibition Galleries, Floor 3, Courtauld Gallery, London

(It occupies the same two galleries as the Monet exhibition did in 2024)

The second is called Wayne Thiebaud Delights (the etchings)

Venue: Gilbert and Ildiko Butler Drawings Gallery

This exhibitions features related 17 prints and works on paper by Thiebaud as well as hand-coloured etchings, to appreciate fully his range as an artist.

In 1964, Wayne Thiebaud created a portfolio of 17 prints, entitled Delights, in which he returned to the favoured still-life motifs found in his paintings and which made his name in the early 1960s: ice cream cones, rows of cakes, gumball machines and many of the other objects of everyday American life. However, these subjects look very different rendered in print, on a small scale and in black and 

Dates: 10 Oct 2025 - 18 Jan 2026

Hours: 10:00 – 18:00 (last entry 17:15)

Admission: All visitors need a timed entry ticket to the permanent collection and/or special exhibitions. Tickets for this exhibition also include access to our permanent collection and displays.

• Courtauld Friends go free
• Adult Ticket £18
• Universal/Pension Credit £8
• Student Ticket £8
• Teachers/Lecturers £9.50

I'm probably going to go back in the New Year - before it finishes - to see it again.

I mean it's not like we see Thiebaud's paintings over here all the time

View of part of theWayne Thiebaud exhibition
Image: Katherine Tyrrell (Making A Mark)

My observations

Having reviewed my notes, I've reorganised them into groups - and they kind of tell the story of the exhibition. Anything that's a bullet point is what I wrote while staring at the paintings. Some relate to the brief talks given by the curators.

Career History

• Never studied art - only studied art education
• First half of his carer was in commercial art. 
• He interned at Walt Disney. 
• Worked as illustrator, worked with sign painters. Admired work of commercial artists
• He was in his late 30s / early 40s before he had his break through
• De Kooning told him to find his true voice
• 1956: took a year's sabbatical and travelled to New York to meet other artists - where he  developed an interest in shop displays
• 1961 - moved towards his unmistakable style of isolating objects within a suggested bare context
• 1961: his pies became painterly and clarified his preferred way of working
• 1962: had his first exhibition in New York. Everybody had rejected him - until he got to Alan Stone (the images of Thiebaud's pies stuck in his mind) who gave him an exhibition of 45 paintings - every work sold to collectors and major museums!
• 1963: he exhibited at the LA Museum with Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns and Ed Ruscha

Style / Focus 

• The “laureate of lunch counters”
• "Edward hopper of dinette counter"
• He liked still lifes by Cezanne and Chardin
• Mid late 50s starting to focus on americana and everyday life and shop displays

Early Thiebaud
- more complex compositions and darker and "grungier" (John Bratbyesque)
(left) Meat Counter (1956-59) oil on canvas
(right) Pinball Machine (1956) mixed media on board 
Image: Katherine Tyrrell (Making A Mark)

• Style cleans up and becomes simple and lusher as he progresses
• Conveys essence shorn of detail - Thiebaud used to work in advertising
• Style changes profoundly changes in 1961 - becomes more “clearly rendered and tightly composed” eg Penny Machines
• Staging: Countertop paintings - intentionally stages the objects
• Viewers of his paintings are positioned as customers
• Paintings of the american boom

Wayne Thiebaud Countertops
(left) Delicatessen Counter (1962) (right) Delicatessen Counter (1963)
Image: Katherine Tyrrell (Making A Mark)

His compositions were imaginary and driven by memories of shopping trips in his youth. These approaches to portraying art initiated the characterisation of him as being a contemporary still life painter - but in the tradition of Jean Simeon Chardin and Paul Cezanne.

Subject Matter / "Pleasure in objects of vernacular Americana"

definition of "Americana"

• Saw himself as continuing the tradition of still life painting - he draw and painted objects which speak of their time
• Common objects deserving of being portrayed
• Said every era produces its own still life - this was his mission
• His exploration of still life reminds us of the fleeting nature of life
• As a child he loved sweets
• Objects of interest to children - what they see when they go shopping with mother????
• Or what teenagers see when in early jobs
• Display of bright and brash cakes
• Critique of modern eating habits?
• Focus on still life objects in public and commercial places - with no people
• Referred to them as little “vedute” in fragmented memories - the isolated pie

“Common objects become strangely uncommon when removed from their context and ordinary ways of being seen” Thiebaud 

Wayne Thiebaud, Boston Cremes (1962)
oil on Canvas, 35.6 x 45.7cm
Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento
Image: Katherine Tyrrell (Making A Mark)

Often characterised as part of the pop art generation, in reality he was anything but. 

Whereas pop artists like Warhol and Lichtenstein created art which was very flat and reminiscent of comics and commercial art, Thiebaud actually created art that was more 3D than 2D! His painting was an act of painterly enquiry - in contrast to  the pop artists.

Process

• Always painted from memory rather than from the object in front of him
• Lot of apparently flat surfaces (in photos) which are actually richly textured (when viewed as a painting)
• Focused on shapes
• Thick brushwork - paints so thickly every brush mark is accentuated
• On his cakes he “piped on the icing” elevating both the still life genre and his subject matter
• He uses paint like he's using an icing knife
• Reproductions suggest many of his paintings are flat whereas the later ones are in fact very painterly - and need to be seen for real!

Wayne Thiebaud, Cakes, 1963,
Oil on canvas, 152.4 x 182.9cm,
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
© Wayne Thiebaud/VAGA at ARS, NY and DACS, London 2025.
Image: Courtesy National Gallery of Art, Washington

One of the cakes in "Cakes"
Image: Katherine Tyrrell (Making A Mark)

Colours

• Candy colours
• Lot of emphasis on red white and blue
• Red also used as under colour or for outlining objects before top colours put on
• Some paler pink and chocolate colours where cakes are involved
• Blue or pale purple shadows (unless underneath machines)
• Turquoise blue shadows under pie counter
• Blue shadows - makes them almost unworldly
• Later on dropped the coloured backgrounds in favour of light/white backgrounds
• Virtually no black in later paintings

Wayne Thiebaud Candy Counter (1969)

oil on canvas 120.7 x 91.8cm

Private Collection
Image: Katherine Tyrrell (Making A Mark)

Four Pinball Machines (1962) Wayne Thiebaud
oil on canvas, 172.7 x 182.8cm
Private Collection
Image: Katherine Tyrrell (Making A Mark)

Themes

• Monumental status of some subjects and still life paintings
• Initial focus on pinball machines / penny machines
• Moved on to Candy Counters - early large scale
• Progressed to Pies and Cakes - lush creamy decorations
• Empty surroundings
• Consumerism
• No people also means they are somewhat cold and isolated

Points to note

• Every pie is different - despite the repeats

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The Drawings and Etchings

The 3rd floor exhibition includes a sample of pen and ink / prints / pastel drawings

However it's the exhibitions of drawings and etchings in Gilbert and Ildiko Butler Drawings Gallery which provides a much better insight into his work.

Wayne Thiebaud, Bacon and Eggs 
Etching (fifth plate) 
Plate Size 13x15cm

Etchings by Wayne Thiebaud

and finally....

It seems appropriate to end on the image which was my first introduction to Thiebaud - as an art postcard. I saw it and immediately thought - as an inveterate hatcher - "I'm having that!"

Wayne Thiebaud Cake Window 
Etching | Thirteenth Plate
Plate size: 12.5 x 15cm

A BIG Thank you to the Courtauld Gallery for lovely large text captions which can be easily read