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Clare Leighton
(1898 - 1989)
The original designs for Southern Harvest, circa 1941
Clare Leighton (1898 - 1989)
Size:
Height – 15.5cm
Width – 10.2cm
Singing was originally printed in an edition of 75 as part of Helen Plotz, Untune the Sky, (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell).1957. The was a collection of verse from Euripides and Pindar, through Herrick and Shakespeare, to Marianne Moore and Wallace Stevens, celebrating the power of music and bring to the reader “the full-fugued song of the universe un-ending.” In keeping with this interpretation Leightons image combines two foreground angelic portrait heads with ecstatic gospel singers in profile in the background, with birds singing dawn chorus bathed in the rays of celestial light.
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.
