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Lot Essay
“[Thiebaud’s] works are object lessons in looking hard and thinking about the process of perception, recollection, and transferal of form in two dimensions.” - Stephen A. Nash
Wayne Thiebaud’s River Stretch is a striking topographical examination of the stunning beauty of the Californian landscape. Rendered on an epic scale, this large-scale work captures not only the geographical features of the countryside but also, in Thiebaud’s commensurate way, the interplay of light as it reflects off the landscape. Painted in 2000, the present work belongs to a triumphal series that the artist began during the latter years of his career, and which formed the ultimate culmination of a lifetime’s investigation into his intensive use of color.
Measuring six feet tall, this imposing canvas depicts the winding Sacramento River as it makes its way through the fertile countryside of Northern California before opening up into San Franscisco Bay. Central to the composition is the milky—almost mirror-like—surface of the river as it reflects the trees and bushes that populate its banks. As the river enters the composition on the right of the picture plane, it possesses the straight edges of a body of water that has passed through an area of intense human intervention in the landscape, but as it reaches the expanse of the bay, it has become more meandering, liberated from anthropogenic markers. Along its banks, and with his usual precision, Thiebaud depicts the reason for that intervention: fields of heavily worked crops. From the crisp furrows of freshly ploughed soil, to the rows of fruit trees for which the area is known, Thiebaud perfectly captures the rich variety of the landscape. “His works are object lessons in looking hard and thinking about the process of perception, recollection, and transferal of form in two dimensions” (S. A. Nash, “Unbalancing Acts: Wayne Thiebaud Reconsidered,” in S. A. Nash and A. Gopnik, Wayne Thiebaud: A Paintings Retrospective, exh. cat., Fine Art Museums of San Francisco, 2000, p. 35).
Thiebaud’s use of color in River Stretch is more intense than at any other point in his career. Its origins can be found in the artist’s iconic paintings from the 1960s, the row of cakes and pastries he recalled from his youth. In these earlier paintings, color plays both a representational and emotional role, helping to create an atmosphere of nostalgia. But here in River Stretch, it plays a much more dramatic, non-representational role worthy of any Fauve painter, to create a highly evocative work. Even though Thiebaud has been celebrated as a colorist for much of his career, as critic Adam Gopnik points out, these later paintings represent “a late flowering that not even the artist’s keenest admirers could have anticipated” (A. Gopnik, “An American Painter,” in S. A. Nash and A. Gopnik, Wayne Thiebaud: A Paintings Retrospective, exh. cat., Fine Art Museums of San Francisco, 2000, pp. 61-62).
The exquisite details with which Thiebaud imbues his landscapes come very much from a place of love. The artist had an intimate knowledge of these fields as—during his childhood—he spent time directly in the landscape helping on his grandfather’s farm. “I plowed, harrowed, dug, and hitched up teams…and planted and harvested alfalfa, potatoes, and 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” (W. Thiebaud, quoted by S. A. Nash, “Unbalancing Acts: Wayne Thiebaud Reconsidered,” in S. A. Nash and A. Gopnik, Wayne Thiebaud A Paintings Retrospective, exh. cat., Fine Art Museums of San Francisco, 2000, p. 33).
In addition to being a very personal work for Thiebaud, River Stretch also takes its place in the wider history of landscape painting. The topography of a winding river was often included in works from the Renaissance to allude to myriad meanings, from fertility and abundance, to journeys and change. Indeed, the symbolic meaning of the meandering river in perhaps the most famous painting in the world—Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa (c. 1503-1519, Louvre, Paris)—is still hotly debated by art historians and academics today. By the eighteenth-century however, and with the expansion of the landowning classes in Europe, the landscape became a synonym for power and wealth, as in Thomas Gainsborough’s Mr and Mrs Andrews (c. 1750, National Gallery, London), a painting where the rolling fields almost subsume the apparent subjects of the painting itself. Other art historical precedents that have been attributed to Thiebaud’s landscapes include Cezanne’s method of visual analysis through shifting planes of color and light, the vivid improvisations of the Fauves, the planar distortions and spatial disruptions of early Cubist landscapes, and the use of multiple perspectives found in Asian landscape painting. “[It’s] a studio practice of attempting to use as many tools of perspective and influence from East and West and wherever, and attempting to make a non-pictorial emphasis to find the landscape,” the artist has noted (W. Thiebaud, “Wayne Thiebaud in Conversation with Philippe de Montebello,” in California Landscapes: Richard Diebenkorn/Wayne Thiebaud, exh. cat., Acquavella, New York, 2018, p. 52).
But it is with American artists that the landscape played its most integral role in forming their identity. Beginning with the nineteenth-century Hudson River School, the dramatic topography of the Americas become a metaphor for both the spiritual and physical struggles of an emerging nation. Paintings like Thomas Cole’s The Oxbow from Mount Holyoke, Northampton, Massachusetts, after a Thunderstorm (1836, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York) ably demonstrates the duality of landscape painting during these formative years. The landscapes of the western United States have proved to be particularly fertile ground for postwar and contemporary artists such as Ed Ruscha and Richard Diebenkorn. Like Thiebaud, Diebenkorn was a native of these western states, and the landscape became the formative part of his career; the artist’s topographical studies of the northern California—his Berkeley, Sausalito, and Albuquerque series of paintings—formed the backbone of Abstract Expressionism.
Paintings such as River Stretch are the triumphal conclusion to decades of careful and intense study of his subject matter. Beginning in the 1960s, with his ‘portraits’ of cakes, candies, and other nostalgic foodstuffs, Wayne Thiebaud established himself as the twentieth-century’s ultimate technical painter. Like Cezanne, Thiebaud's close and careful examination of the individual elements that make up the landscape has resulted in a painting that challenges the traditional conventions of the genre. There appears to be no contrast between the natural and man-made, but rather a fusion of elements into one unified scene. His use of perspective draws the viewer into the landscape, asking us to consider the nature of our surroundings while encouraging us to recognize the haunting sense of beauty in even the most ubiquitous of objects.
Wayne Thiebaud’s River Stretch is a striking topographical examination of the stunning beauty of the Californian landscape. Rendered on an epic scale, this large-scale work captures not only the geographical features of the countryside but also, in Thiebaud’s commensurate way, the interplay of light as it reflects off the landscape. Painted in 2000, the present work belongs to a triumphal series that the artist began during the latter years of his career, and which formed the ultimate culmination of a lifetime’s investigation into his intensive use of color.
Measuring six feet tall, this imposing canvas depicts the winding Sacramento River as it makes its way through the fertile countryside of Northern California before opening up into San Franscisco Bay. Central to the composition is the milky—almost mirror-like—surface of the river as it reflects the trees and bushes that populate its banks. As the river enters the composition on the right of the picture plane, it possesses the straight edges of a body of water that has passed through an area of intense human intervention in the landscape, but as it reaches the expanse of the bay, it has become more meandering, liberated from anthropogenic markers. Along its banks, and with his usual precision, Thiebaud depicts the reason for that intervention: fields of heavily worked crops. From the crisp furrows of freshly ploughed soil, to the rows of fruit trees for which the area is known, Thiebaud perfectly captures the rich variety of the landscape. “His works are object lessons in looking hard and thinking about the process of perception, recollection, and transferal of form in two dimensions” (S. A. Nash, “Unbalancing Acts: Wayne Thiebaud Reconsidered,” in S. A. Nash and A. Gopnik, Wayne Thiebaud: A Paintings Retrospective, exh. cat., Fine Art Museums of San Francisco, 2000, p. 35).
Thiebaud’s use of color in River Stretch is more intense than at any other point in his career. Its origins can be found in the artist’s iconic paintings from the 1960s, the row of cakes and pastries he recalled from his youth. In these earlier paintings, color plays both a representational and emotional role, helping to create an atmosphere of nostalgia. But here in River Stretch, it plays a much more dramatic, non-representational role worthy of any Fauve painter, to create a highly evocative work. Even though Thiebaud has been celebrated as a colorist for much of his career, as critic Adam Gopnik points out, these later paintings represent “a late flowering that not even the artist’s keenest admirers could have anticipated” (A. Gopnik, “An American Painter,” in S. A. Nash and A. Gopnik, Wayne Thiebaud: A Paintings Retrospective, exh. cat., Fine Art Museums of San Francisco, 2000, pp. 61-62).
The exquisite details with which Thiebaud imbues his landscapes come very much from a place of love. The artist had an intimate knowledge of these fields as—during his childhood—he spent time directly in the landscape helping on his grandfather’s farm. “I plowed, harrowed, dug, and hitched up teams…and planted and harvested alfalfa, potatoes, and 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” (W. Thiebaud, quoted by S. A. Nash, “Unbalancing Acts: Wayne Thiebaud Reconsidered,” in S. A. Nash and A. Gopnik, Wayne Thiebaud A Paintings Retrospective, exh. cat., Fine Art Museums of San Francisco, 2000, p. 33).
In addition to being a very personal work for Thiebaud, River Stretch also takes its place in the wider history of landscape painting. The topography of a winding river was often included in works from the Renaissance to allude to myriad meanings, from fertility and abundance, to journeys and change. Indeed, the symbolic meaning of the meandering river in perhaps the most famous painting in the world—Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa (c. 1503-1519, Louvre, Paris)—is still hotly debated by art historians and academics today. By the eighteenth-century however, and with the expansion of the landowning classes in Europe, the landscape became a synonym for power and wealth, as in Thomas Gainsborough’s Mr and Mrs Andrews (c. 1750, National Gallery, London), a painting where the rolling fields almost subsume the apparent subjects of the painting itself. Other art historical precedents that have been attributed to Thiebaud’s landscapes include Cezanne’s method of visual analysis through shifting planes of color and light, the vivid improvisations of the Fauves, the planar distortions and spatial disruptions of early Cubist landscapes, and the use of multiple perspectives found in Asian landscape painting. “[It’s] a studio practice of attempting to use as many tools of perspective and influence from East and West and wherever, and attempting to make a non-pictorial emphasis to find the landscape,” the artist has noted (W. Thiebaud, “Wayne Thiebaud in Conversation with Philippe de Montebello,” in California Landscapes: Richard Diebenkorn/Wayne Thiebaud, exh. cat., Acquavella, New York, 2018, p. 52).
But it is with American artists that the landscape played its most integral role in forming their identity. Beginning with the nineteenth-century Hudson River School, the dramatic topography of the Americas become a metaphor for both the spiritual and physical struggles of an emerging nation. Paintings like Thomas Cole’s The Oxbow from Mount Holyoke, Northampton, Massachusetts, after a Thunderstorm (1836, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York) ably demonstrates the duality of landscape painting during these formative years. The landscapes of the western United States have proved to be particularly fertile ground for postwar and contemporary artists such as Ed Ruscha and Richard Diebenkorn. Like Thiebaud, Diebenkorn was a native of these western states, and the landscape became the formative part of his career; the artist’s topographical studies of the northern California—his Berkeley, Sausalito, and Albuquerque series of paintings—formed the backbone of Abstract Expressionism.
Paintings such as River Stretch are the triumphal conclusion to decades of careful and intense study of his subject matter. Beginning in the 1960s, with his ‘portraits’ of cakes, candies, and other nostalgic foodstuffs, Wayne Thiebaud established himself as the twentieth-century’s ultimate technical painter. Like Cezanne, Thiebaud's close and careful examination of the individual elements that make up the landscape has resulted in a painting that challenges the traditional conventions of the genre. There appears to be no contrast between the natural and man-made, but rather a fusion of elements into one unified scene. His use of perspective draws the viewer into the landscape, asking us to consider the nature of our surroundings while encouraging us to recognize the haunting sense of beauty in even the most ubiquitous of objects.