‘This may be my best painting’

Paul Wonner | Nude with Indian Rug (1961)

By MATT GONZALEZ

I first met Paul Wonner and Bill Brown in the early 2000s at the San Francisco home of the gallerist Charles Campbell and his artist wife, Glenna.

I particularly enjoyed watching Bill and Paul look at their own paintings, which hung in the Campbells’ Potrero Hill home. Charlie and Glenna had a wonderful collection, which included their Bay Area Figurative associates, including Richard Diebenkorn, David Park, Joan Brown, Manuel Neri, Elmer Bischoff, Wayne Thiebaud and Nathan Oliveira. There was something about the way that Bill and Paul studied their own paintings that seemed as if they were discovering them for the first time.

Once when I was with Paul and Charlie in the living room, among a Neri plaster and paintings by Frank Auerbach and Thiebaud, Paul was staring intently at one of his own paintings, his 1961 Nude with Indian Rug. I was anticipating his disapproval when he said, “This may be my best painting.” Charlie was so excited that he went over to the kitchen, asked Glenna and Bill to join us, and made Paul repeat the remark. Whether the wine had already gotten to him, I do not know, as Paul made too many fine paintings in my estimation to call any one of them his best. However, there was in his comment an excitement about engaging with a work from another era. We all enjoyed a hearty toast to the sentiment.

— excerpted from Breaking the Rules: Paul Wonner and Theophilius Brown, a catalog for the exhibition of the same title at the Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento, which continues through August 27.