There is a legend told about the art critic Roger Fry’s journeys as a young man in Italy: He would become so enamored of and curious about paintings in the churches and galleries he was visiting that, taking care not to be caught by a custodian, he would lick the surfaces. Apparently, saliva is actually good for paint, but conservation was not his motivation: Intimacy with great art became visceral, as its tactile qualities demanded.

The work of Wayne Thiebaud calls this anecdote to mind, as the painter early in his career made the depiction of food his most compelling motif. The old phrase “good enough to eat” takes on new meaning in relation to a classic Thiebaud lineup of ice cream, hot dogs, bowls of soup, or pies. Ersatz catering specimens in serial arrangements were to Mr. Thiebaud what apples were to Cezanne: a still-life motif, seemingly merely convenient, that turned out to be axiomatic to his identity as a painter.

Mr. Thiebaud’s attraction to the subject singled him out as an important forerunner to Pop Art, and a bridge to the earlier evoker of alienation American-style, Edward Hopper. At the same time, his sheer painterliness and the expressive poignancy of his style suggested a more traditional realist pedigree.

In 2001 the Whitney presented a paintings retrospective (originating at the Legion of Honor in San Francisco) that sought to check the apprehension that Mr. Thiebaud was the master of the creamcake who went off the rails when he turned from still life to landscape. This wonderful show brought out the unity of concern and approach between the West Coast artist’s recent aerial views – of agrarian landscapes or the mountainous cities at once alien and lovable, real and wacky – and the kitschy foodstuffs for which he remains best known.

By treating desire so coolly yet keeping it alive, Mr. Thiebaud found a way to reconcile nature (whether manifest as landscape, the erotic, or hunger) with its opposite, the synthetic. In the words of Alex Katz, with whom he has a lot in common, his painting was “something hot done in a cool way.”

Now Allan Stone presents an overview of works since the early 1960s, which can be classed as Thiebaud for weight-watchers: There are wonderful still lifes, but the emphasis on non-edible motifs and on landscape is decidedly lo-cal. There is nothing quite like “Around the Cake” (1962), in which the application of paint to iced cake in the center of the composition directly recalls the way a pastry chef would work.

Still, Mr. Thiebaud’s painterly surfaces evoke tactile responses that are tightly controlled and linked to their subject: There is always a knowing, finely crafted bond between motif and delivery, which keeps his painting within the realm of cool irony.

There is also plenty of cholesterol in the paint itself, whatever the fat content of the motifs in question. A wonderful “Delicatessen Counter” (1963), which depicts rounds and rectangles of processed cheese, trays of meat, and hanging salamis, dominates the first wall at Stone. There is as much succulence, however, in the plain, creamy white of the counter surface and neutral space behind as on the actual produce.

This abstraction brings to mind the sumptuous surfaces of Amadee Ozenfant. It is as if Mr. Thiebaud is saying that the true fat and goo is in the paint, not what’s painted. To confirm this reading, this show places an untitled 1985 still life of a pot of paint, its contents dribbling down the lovingly rendered metallic surface with the voluptuousness of a French cheese running away with itself, right next to “Delicatessen Counter.”

What I miss from this show is any example of Mr. Thiebaud’s response to the female form: Although a minority among his motifs, and often the source of his most problematic images, his capture of flesh against fabric, or – better still – the sense of a happy wrestle between nature and artifice in the lycra-clad limbs of his cheerleaders and showgirls, goes to the heart of his painterly aesthetic. You could say Mr. Thiebaud is a transubstantiationist: He paints the point of communion between touch and sight, the social and the instinctual, appetite and availability.

With this in mind, his landscapes, placed in intimacy with his still lifes, don’t seem such a departure after all. His cityscapes almost ham up the surreal sense of the vertiginous. When he paints or draws San Francisco, it is as if he wants to stress the absurdity of imposing a grid on steep hills: The grid goes against nature; the organic solution would have been winding roads that negotiate ascent and descent with the gentlest ease. His landscapes – with fields in tacky synthetic colors that pick out the hues of his lurid sunsets – are much more about human cultivation than raw nature.

It would be far-fetched to read any ecological message into so epicurean a painter as Mr. Thiebaud. Without resorting to commentary, however, his paintings understand at a profound level that there isn’t much true nature left in the humanly mediated world.

Until May 27 (113 E. 90th Street, between Park and Lexington Avenues, 212-987-4997). Prices: $225,000-$1,600,000.