When he was a boy, the California artist Wayne Thiebaud helped out at the Ringling Brothers circus in exchange for tickets. The circus may have left town but it never left Thiebaud. As a high school student he apprenticed at the Walt Disney Studios as an animator, and found drawing for children enthralling. He went on to work as an illustrator, living between Los Angeles and New York from 1938 to 1949, before becoming a full-time artist. Thiebaud died in December 2021, at 101. His joie de vivre lives on in paintings permeated with remembered innocence. In the first exhibition of Thiebaud’s work in the U.K., his still lifes take center stage. —Elena Clavarino