Morton Wayne Thiebaud

Lot Description WAYNE THIEBAUD (b. 1920) Case Pies signed, dated and titled 'Case Pies Thiebaud 1964' (lower edge) gouache and watercolor on etching Image: 4 x 4 7/8 in. (10.2 x 12.4 cm.) Sheet: 14 7/8 x 11 in. (37.8 x 27.9 cm.) Executed in 1964. Provenance Ed Russel, San Francisco Acquired from the above by the present owner, 1999 Exhibited San Francisco, Modernism Gallery, Inc., Selected Prints, March-April, 1999.

WAYNE THIEBAUD (b. 1920) Beach Scene , 1960 signed and dated 'Thiebaud 60' (lower right); signed 'Thiebaud' (on the reverse) oil on canvas 18 x 36 1/8in. (45.7 x 91.7cm) PROVENANCE: Private Collection, California (acquired in the early 1960s in San Francisco). Acquired from the above by the present owner. Thiebaud's imagery is ultimately the result of three interconnected elements: observation, recollection, and imagination" (John Wilmerding, "Wayne Thiebaud 'The Emperor of Ice Cream'", in Wayne Thiebaud, exh. cat., New York, Acquavella Gallery, 2012, p. 29). No other artist has truly pieced together an American memory the way Wayne Thiebaud has done within his lifetime of works. From cakes and lipsticks to rolling California hills and San Francisco streets, Thiebaud's works exemplify what it means to be a painter – manipulating chromatic elements and depth along with never losing the central idea of abstraction. Beach Scene fits nicely amongst his oeuvre of capturing the everyday, heavily stylizing a lifeguard tower that would have been familiar to him during his childhood in Long Beach, California. His uniquely honed ability to unearth the beauty and intricacies in objects and scenes that had been passed over by other artists, along with an intense understanding of his medium, has resulted in a piece that encourages the viewer to observe with fresh eyes our surroundings with restored enthusiasm and enjoyment. Like many of his fellow artists, Wayne Thiebaud initially began his career as a commercial artist, including a brief period where he worked for Walt Disney Studios piecing together iconic cartoon scenes. After completing his formal studies at San Jose State University, Thiebaud went to Sacramento in the early 1950s for graduate work. In a break from teaching, Thiebaud went to New York and worked on Madison Avenue, where he met Elaine and Willem de Kooning, Philip Pearlstein, and other prominent figures in the art world. Perhaps one of the most important times in his career, Thiebaud put on a one-man exhibition at Allan Stone Gallery in 1962, which featured his still life pictures of cakes, bottles, and other confectionery delights. During this time, the Pop Art movement burst onto the scene and captured the nation's attention – where artists like Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein thrust ordinary objects onto pedestals – highlighting America's culture of consumerism. What placed Thiebaud apart from his Pop art contemporaries, however was his pure painterly production – where rather than exploring the notion of manufacturing and image making, Thiebaud desired to push the corners of traditional media. Further opposing Pop Art's intensified analysis on consumerism, Thiebaud turned towards highlighting the California landscape beginning in the 1960s, which is were Beach Scene comes into view. Often drawing from his own childhood memories, Thiebaud's works lend themselves towards a uniquely comforting idea of American romanticism – highlighting iconic beach imagery that transports the viewer, where their feet grow warm in the sand and their hair is swept back by a salt breeze: "such features tend to transport the familiar yet highly simplified and conceptual objects that Thiebaud sculpts with paint and brush away from out quotidian world where the laws of physics, optics, and weather prevail into his own world where the sun always shines, gravity in inert, and nothing spoils. It is a world constructed equally of memory and longing, and a very pleasant place to be" (S. Nash, 'Thiebaud's Many Realisms', in Wayne Thiebaud: Seventy Years of Painting , exh. cat., Palm Springs Art Museum, 2009, p. 15). Only a true master of his medium could make his pictures carry the viewer to a time forgotten, hidden in the annals of their memory – of the warmth and familiarity of nature along side the comfort of sweet butterscotch like sand. This affect is only possible by Theibaud's handling of 'the plastic qualities of pigment which align him to the venerable tradition of American art that takes us back to such nineteenth-century masters as Frederic Church, Albert Ryder, and the late Winslow Homer, plus a few twentieth-century predecessors like George Bellows, Willem de Kooning, and Franz Kline. What they all share are painterly passages of great expressive power, whether abstract or descriptive. But Thiebaud has demonstrated a special ability to use paint both to describe and imitate a texture at once. Rarely have form and content been so intimately fused." (John Wilmerding, "Wayne Thiebaud 'The Emperor of Ice Cream'", in Wayne Thiebaud, exh. cat., New York, Acquavella Gallery, 2012, p. 9). Thus, only an artist such as Wayne Thiebaud could use paint as a media that harnesses the blissful memories of the past along with the palpable effects of color and light. "I think I have such a proclivity towards art history and its uses. I believe very much in the notion that 'Art comes from 'Art'. Chardin has always been on of the people I've loved very much, been thrilled by his work, and I'm sure I've been influenced a great deal by him particularly in specific ways. Chardin was very interested in the idea of the propensity of materials, which fascinates me, how you can take oil paint and make it function for the replication of so many things, and such different things" - Wayne Thiebaud (Wayne Thiebaud, quoted in A. LeGrace, G. Benson and Dd. Shearer, "Documents-An Interview with Wayne Thiebaud, in Leonardo , vol. 2, no. 1, January 1969, p. 65).

WAYNE THIEBAUD (B. 1920) Boston Cremes, from Seven Still Lifes and a Silver Landscape linocut in colors, 1971, on Arches, signed and dated '1970' in pencil, numbered 15/50 (there were also 10 artist's proofs), published by Parasol Press, New York, with full margins, light-staining, rolling creases in places at the upper and lower sheet edges B. 13 5/8 x 20¼ in. (347 x 515 mm.) S. 22 3/8 x 30 in. (569 x 762 mm.) PROPERTY FROM A EUROPEAN FAMILY COLLECTION

WAYNE THIEBAUD Gum Machine, from Delights portfolio, 1964 Etching, on wove paper, with margins, I. 4 x 4 in (10.2 x 10.2 cm); S. 12 7/8 x 11 in (32.7 x 27.9 cm) signed, titled, dated ````64' and annotated ````A/P' in pencil (an artist's proof, the edition was 100), published by Crown Point Press, the palest mat staining, soiling along the upper sheet edge, otherwise in very good condition, framed.

Lot Description Wayne Thiebaud (b. 1920) Candy Apple Cigar Box signed 'Thiebaud' (inside the lid) oil on wooden cigar box 8 3/8 x 5 5/8 x 2 5/8 in. (21.2 x 14.2 x 6.6 cm.) Executed in 1965. Provenance Gift of the artist to the present owner Pre-Lot Text Property from the Collection of Tony Berlant View Lot Notes › In 1965, immediately after graduation from UCLA with an MFA in painting, I accepted a job with a small remote school, American River Junior College in Carmichael, California, just on the outskirts of Sacramento. UCLA had told me that they would hire me to teach, but that I had to first teach somewhere else for a year. My interview with the school president was to be the only job interview I would ever have; I was hired on the spot, perhaps because I had strong letters of approval from Richard Diebenkorn, Bill Brice and Ed Kienholz. I moved into a lovely small brick house on a very large property surrounded by trees and five minutes by car to the college. The living room made a good studio. I was twenty-four years old and had already had a one person exhibition arranged by Bob Irwin with David Stuart of my Girl pieces which were based on tracing my women friends and using their clothing as collage material. I was part of the LA art scene and was included in some of the first Pop Art shows along with Wayne Thiebaud and the usual suspects from both coasts. I had never met Thiebaud and was delighted when he telephoned me to say that he'd heard I was coming to Sacramento and to invite me to take part in a group exhibition of local artists that he was organizing. Wayne was inclusive and outreaching. Having spent his formative years in New York, he was now happily ensconced in the calm of Sacramento as head of the Art department at the University of California, Davis and in this position he brought much of the top talent from the San Francisco Bay Area to teach at Davis. Out in the country and best known for its agriculture and veterinary departments, UC, Davis was an oasis of adventuresome and focused art making. Thiebaud, along with Bob Arneson, Bill Wiley, Manuel Neri, Roy De Forest and others were intertwined academically and socially with a group of talented graduate students, most memorably, Bruce Nauman who was already making astounding pieces that would take their place in art history. A surprise bonus came when I ran into Mel Ramos at a party in San Francisco and learned that the he lived just a few blocks away. He was painting some of the best works of his career in the family garage; his canvas leaning against the family car, and his palette and brushes resting on top of the washer and dryer. I remember when Leo Castelli visited the garage. Even then I understood that the laid back vibes in Sacramento made the vibrant LA art scene seem uptight and self-conscious. The black and white photo in the interior of Candy Apple is a detail of Five Seated Figures, 1965 which is, I believe, the largest painting that Thiebaud ever executed and which is now in the collection of the Baltimore Museum of Art. The man in the painting is me, and on my right is Grace McClatchy, the wife of the publisher of the celebrated local newspaper, the Sacramento Bee. To my left is Judy Weintraub-Judy and her lawyer husband were modestly collecting and friends of Wayne and Betty. For many weekend days, I delighted in putting on a suit and tie (one of the few times I've ever worn one) and posing with the others for Wayne's group portrait. During each session I was able to hang a small painting of his that I especially liked directly across from where I was seated, thereby allowing me to experience the work for many sustained hours, a privilege that is usually restricted to those who own and live with a work. Wayne was already celebrated as a brilliant painter and I felt privileged to have contact with him. Every day of these sittings we'd walk to lunch at a hamburger stand nearby, decked out in our "formal" duds. At this time, I made the first of my small house sculptures. I used snips and cut up pieces of found tin, using vast numbers of brads to hammer the tin to small iconic wooden forms. Wayne suggested we trade, which is always the deepest gesture of admiration and acceptance between artists. He offered me an exquisite detailed small watercolor of a case of pies. I can't believe that as a twenty-four year old I had the nerve to say that what I really wanted was a painting in which the object being depicted was basically life size and the rich paint quality directly mimicked the surface and texture of the thing being depicted. I felt that this was his most intense and original work. Wayne said that he'd see what he could do. Some time after I moved back to LA, I was leaving the David Stuart Gallery when David yelled for to me to stop. He opened his desk drawer and said "I always forget to give this to you" whereupon he threw a small package wrapped in brown paper the length of the gallery. Luckily I caught it. That's the moment the Candy Apple painting came into my life. All these years the painting has hung as a radiant icon and a touchstone to a unique artist at one of his best moments. - Tony Berlant