Sold
Clare Leighton
(1898 - 1989)
The original designs for Southern Harvest, circa 1941
Clare Leighton (1898 - 1989)
Size:
Height – 5cm
Width – 8cm
Cotton Picker was originally printed in an edition of 50 as part of Southern Harvest (New York, The Macmillan & Co.), 1942.
Leighton would typically take several days to produce a wood engraving, painstakingly carving the image with special tools strong enough to incise into the end grain of the block, which was typically made of boxwood, sufficiently hard to allow for a number of prints to be made before any loss of sharpness.
Exhibited: Sanctuary, Artist-Gardeners, 1919-39, Garden Museum, London, 25th February – 5 April, 2020
Literature: Christopher Woodward, Sanctuary: Artist-Gardeners, 1919–1939, published by Liss Llewellyn, 2020
Clare Leighton attended the Brighton School of Art (1915), the Slade School of Fine Art (1921’23) and the Central School of Arts and Crafts. Despite her childhood nickname ‘The Bystander’, she became a hugely visible artist on both sides of the Atlantic, and her vast oeuvre includes engravings, paintings, bookplates, illustrations and stained glass. Her twelve plates for Wedgwood, New England Industries, 1952, are amongst her best-known work.
She exhibited with the SWE in London (1923) and at the 1934 Venice Biennale ‘ attaining full membership to the Royal Society of Painter-Etchers and Engravers in the same year. She also made several tours of the United States, becoming a naturalised citizen in 1945. By the time of her death, Leighton had authored twelve books and made over 840 prints.
