Why are Wayne Thiebaud’s paintings at the Courtauld quite so tempting?

American artist Wayne Thiebaud (1920-2021) was fascinated by the symbols of everyday life he saw around him. In the windows of bakeries and on street corners, he was drawn to lusciously frosted cakes and glistening hot dogs; the shapes and colours of gumball machines intrigued him, as did the simplicity of a cup of coffee.

In Thiebaud’s hands, these quotidian motifs are gorgeously elevated when translated into the traditional medium of an oil painting. It wasn’t an obvious career path for Thiebaud, who began working as an illustrator, cartoonist and art director in the 1940s and 1950s, before turning to painting. After being inspired by a meeting with Willem de Kooning in 1956, Thiebaud began painting symbols of American life as he saw them, leading to his first exhibition in 1962.

Great success in the United States followed, yet Thiebaud is lesser known in the UK, and the current exhibition at the Courtauld in London marks his first in the country. ‘To mount an exhibition of his work seemed very long overdue here,’ say the Courtauld curators.

Thiebuad was aware his work captured a slice of 1950s and 1960s life that would soon have passed. ‘He was keen to point out that sooner or later that world would be gone, just as surely as the worlds depicted by his artist heroes Cezanne and Manet are now gone. But his hope was that, like their work, his painting would speak powerfully to later generations. In our contemporary world, where we are all bombarded with fleeting images and everything runs at a million miles an hour, Thiebaud's painting encourages us to slow down and look and think deeply about even the most ephemeral things around us, because there is sometimes unexpected beauty and meaning to be found by doing so. Thiebaud found it in a cheap cup of coffee, a slice of pie, and a gumball machine.’

In 1962, Thiebaud was included, alongside Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein, in an exhibition devoted to Pop Art, yet to see his work in the thickly rendered, painterly flesh is to understand how far away from his contemporaries he actually sat.

‘His paintings are lush and thick, you almost feel you could eat them like frosting on a cake,’ the curators agree. ‘But at the same time, they are so painterly and in a way unreal, or perhaps hyperreal, so you are pulled back into his world of painting from the imagination and that experience is powerful, sensual and thought-provoking.'

As the paintings convey the deliciousness of the treat, they emphasise its artifice – the cake is ready to eat, but we can't reach it. ‘They can be wistful or nostalgic. Sometimes a painting of an apparently abundant counter of sweets or deli goods also has large empty areas that seem sparse and melancholy. So his paintings are not simple – they take you on a journey and we hope that people will find that enriching and surprising.’

‘Wayne Thiebaud: American Still Life’, until 18 January 2026 at the Courtauld, London, courtauld.ac.uk