Wayne Thiebaud

Gump's Gallery, San Francisco
Acquired by the present owner from the above

This work is in very good condition. The canvas is well stretched and colors are vibrant. There is an unobtrusive fine vertical hairline crack extending approximately 1 inch at the center of the extreme left cabbage. There is a ¼ inch faint abrasion at the top edge approximately 1 ½ inches from the upper right corner. There is no evidence of restoration visible under UV light. Framed in a silver metal frame.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING CONDITION OF A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE PRINTED IN THE CATALOGUE.

In an aesthetic that appears completely unassociated with the work of Abstract Expressionism or European Modernism, Thiebaud is nevertheless an artist true to his time.  The realism of his oeuvre is instantly accessible and clearly identifiable as still life, landscape or portraiture.  Yet despite this seemingly modest and direct approach to subject matter, the nature of his art becomes more complex when his technique and his craft are fully analyzed.  In the tradition of post-war avant-garde art, Thiebaud continues to test the tense balance between "likeness" of figuration and the formal concerns of the "abstract" in Twentieth Century Art. 

Three Cabbages from 1969 is an unequivocally American image painted by a quintessentially American artist.  Wayne Thiebaud's opulent handling of paint coupled with his simple, thick brush strokes build each cabbage leaf into a lush, tangible, and highly dimensional object.  Thiebaud's exploration of seemingly banal subjects is spurred on by the modernist ideal that you can make art from anything.  Here, Thiebaud as arranged three cabbage heads as if freshly harvested and arranged each one in a spot-lit manner with deep, vivid blue shadows and exquisite highlights of orange, yellow and blue. 

By painting objects that are consumer goods or products, Thiebaud has often been confused with the concurrent Pop Art trend of the early 1960s.  Thiebaud is rather a wholly individual artist with a signature style of viscous paint application and frontal presentation in foreshortened space.  Like the Pop artists, Thiebaud was sensitive to the prevalence of pop culture and its omnipresence in our visual environment.  At the same time, his balance of representation and abstraction, seriousness and wit, touch and control have rendered Thiebaud's paintings into aesthetic fantasies, almost surreal in their effect.

I plowed, harrowed, dug, and hitched up teams...and planted and harvested alfalfa, potatoes, corn...and I loved it...It was a great way to grow up.  These paintings have something to do with the love of that and in some ways the idea of replicating that experience.
Wayne Thiebaud quoted in Victoria Dalkey, Rural Landscapes, n.p.