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Clare Leighton (1898 - 1989)

The Magic of Handling Earth (BPL 488), By Light of Sun, circa 1941

SKU: 6014
Original woodblock (cancelled)
5 3/4 x 4 in. (14.5 x 10.3 cm)

Size:
Height – 14.5cm
Width – 10.3cm

DESCRIPTION

Provenance:
The Artist’s Estate
Presentation:
framed

The Magic of Handling Earth was published in Elsie Syminton’s By Light of Sun, in 1941, an account of establishing a garden in America by a transplanted Englishwoman. Leighton herself moved to America in 1939 and became a naturalised citizen in 1945.

A talk given shortly after the end of the Second World War, perhaps in 1946 or 1947. Clare had had a passionate horror of war ever since burying the stained and tattered uniform of her brother Roland who died of wounds on the western front in 1915. Her comments below, though inspired by the Second World War, retain their significance today.

An eighty-year-old friend of mine down in North Carolina who is something of a homespun philosopher remarked: ‚ÄúThere’s a whole heap of things we can begin to see to, when the war done ceases more‚Äù. He saw the ending of war as a gradual process, not one joyful event. This set me thinking that wars do not necessarily end when the fighting stops; the world that made it possible may still be with us. I realized that the difference between war and peace today is not a matter of black and white, it is a gradualism. And so, when I try to talk to you about the artist’s place in the world today, I am talking about a world that is still blurred by war. War does not cease with the end of the killing; the state of war in our minds endures. And it is a more complicated, subtly dangerous state perhaps than the war itself. It is charged with potential danger, more confusion and chaos.

A lot of people were frightened of the end of the war; of its challenge. That is where the artist must come in.

I am not talking of the artist specifically as painter, or engraver, or sculptor; I am talking of the artist in general. The artist is the seismograph, the sensitised plate; the receiving station for life. The artist’s sensitivity enables him to see and sense things, if not before they happen, at least before they are recognised by the world at large.

I am talking of the artist and his relationship to life. The artist is above race, creed, class and so on, for visual art, like music, can be

understood by the entire world. And the artist has never been more important. I believe that in Buddhist ethics, one of the deadly sins is a lack of awareness. The artist’s task is to re- awaken awareness, to re-sensitise it. War produces an emotional deadness: once, a distant massacre or a faraway earthquake moved us to righteous indignation. Now, here in America, the whole of Europe might starve and we would hardly be aware of it. There is a cataract over the eyes of the spirit. The artist must be the quickener of the world; we have seen the death of tenderness. As E.M.Forster put it, ‚Äúwe must not let ourselves be numbed by horrors‚Äù.

What were we fighting for? For freedom. Freedom to live fully, which means to create our own symbols of freedom and pass them on to others; to allow for a new set of experiences and a new capacity for them.

We are on the edge of a new civilisation and it is up to us to shape it. As the twig is bent, the tree will grow. It is a tender, young civilisation scarcely born, and it can be shaped in materialism or into the things of the mind and spirit. We artists have a strange sense of hurry – hurry before it is too late; hurry before the world has taken hold of its new values based on ‚Äúthings‚Äù. I have noticed this in many of my fellows. Nylon stockings are not worth our men having died; nor are motor cars. Nor refrigerators, nor limitless gasoline nor vacations in Florida. We owe a debt to our dead. This can only be paid in the slightest degree by creating a new world. This means a really new world, not one with its old values. I can now speak as an American, being a self- elected immigrant and taking out my papers. We run the risk of being a defeated country, for we are putting our faith in things. Apart from our mental values, we must reconstruct the world’s symbols which we have had to tear down: Monte Cassino, the Mantegna paintings at Padua; the churches, buildings and libraries. We must slave to rebuild, so that there is as little guilt as possible; so that this age in the eyes of posterity may not be looked on as an age of the ravager and the destroyer. The beneficent influences throughout the world are Mozart, Hans Andersen and the like – not the big bankers and the automobile manufacturers. We must add our weight to the spiritual side of the balance. There is no time to lose, for we are drifting into fear and chaos.

Chaos! We need a sense of order, of benign order as represented by the seasons, the earth, the art of the Bach fugue. The human being needs benign discipline – we may find it in authoritarian, democratic, or religious form, or in awareness of the arts, but always we need something of ordered creativity. We need order in architecture. This state of mind of happy order is the best guard against

anarchy and totalitarianism. It is better than armies. Our men are coming home. A friend declared that he had put his soul on ice for the duration of the war. Order is needed to fill their empty hands that have grown accustomed to bombs and planes; we dare not let them stay empty.

In rebuilding our world we need something of the spirit to balance this mechanised age. Mankind is not yet adjusted to wholesale mechanisation. Our spirit is lonely. We are still the mute inactive scared creator. There has been anonymous art from the beginning of mankind; there is a creative urge in us all. It must have an outlet. This is the way to make a world in which peace is a vital, enduring thing, and not a mere negation of the state of war.

We are grateful to David Leighton for allowing the use of the above text – an extract from Clare Leighton, The growth and shaping of an artist-writer, p .47-48), published by The Estate of Clare Leighton, 2009

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

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THE ARTIST

Clare Leighton
Clare
Leighton
1898 - 1989

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.

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The Reverend Hill Walks Away, BPL500, 1942
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Angels and Trumpets, The Vision Splendid, BPL 762 1965
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In the Beginning, BPL 716 1955
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Lopping, The Book of Proverbs, BPL 210 1933
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Those were Rolling Hills (Kentucky Scene), BPL 566 1944
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Watermill, BPL 496 1942
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The Darking Thrush, Hardy Shepherds, (Thomas Hardy), BPL 774b 1965
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“Some Better Country” (Time of Man), BPL 580 1944
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Singing, BPL 723 1957
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Reading, Writing, Speaking, BPL 730 1959
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I went by the field (Psalms), BPL 667 1952
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Both Man & Bird & Beast, BPL 718 1955
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The Book of Ecclesiastics, BPL 669
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God’s Familiars, Earth is the Lord’s, Gods Familiar, BPL 764 1965
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Shells & Seaweed, BPL 680 1954
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Flowers on a hilltop near a bay
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“Where Land Meets Sea” (Coastline is the catalogues title, The Beach is the title of the chapter), BPL 707
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Tulip Poplar Bud BPL 517 1942
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The Flowering Hawthorn BPL 749 1962
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The Cello Player, BPL 722, circa 1957
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View from Whiteleaf Cross, BPL 256
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The Haricot Planting, BPL 768
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The House at Phillips Place, BPL 577
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A herd of goats
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Scarecrow, BPL 548 1942
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Ellen and Her Children (BPL578), 1944
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Smoke House, BPL 505 1942
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Hog Killing, BPL 514 1942
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Rounding Cornwall BPL 747 1962
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The Sleep of the Labouring Man BPL 671 1952
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Cinnamon Fern, BPL 508 1942
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Religion, BPL 583 1944
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Winter (BPL 571) 1944
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All Instruments, BPL 721
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He Maketh the Barren Women, BPL 658
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Farmer and Statue of Liberty, 1930’s
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Ship Wreck, BPL 696
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The Journey, 1946 (BP 597)
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Book with quill pen and ink bottle
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Fishermen & Nets, (BPL 615)
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Who Shall Ascend, (BPL 646)
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The Magic of Handling Earth (BPL 488), By Light of Sun, circa 1941
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Alabama Hog Pen (BPL 518)
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Trillium (BPL 522), 1942
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Fishing (chapter header) (BPL 689)
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I Was Just Thinking (BPL 729), 1958
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Travelling (BPL 732)
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Louisiana Pilgrimage (BPL 525), 1942
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Apple Butter (BPL 523), Top Potential
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Cotton Picker (BPL 491), Cotton Frontispiece, 1942
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Lovers In the Wheat field (BPL 570), 1944
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He Brought Streams, (BPL 653) Psalms, circa 1952
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Frontispiece Ellen… (BPL 564), 1944
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Charm Me Asleep (BPL 758), Music & Dreams, 1962
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To Everything There Is a Season, Psalms (BPL 670)
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The Berry Picker (BPL 701)
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Building The First Church (BPL 748), Flowering Hawthorn
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Cranberry Bogs (BPL 684),
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Sorghum Mill (BPL516)
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In The Morning Sow Thy Seed (BPL 672), 1952
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Watchers Of The Sky (BPL 719), 1955
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I Cried With My Whole Heart (BPL 659) Psalms
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The Reaper (BPL 221), 1933
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The Sluggard Will Not Plow (BPL 666) Psalms
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Jasper’s Hog Pen (BPL 574 )
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Old Sam (BPL 526)
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He That Gathereth (BPL 665) Psalms, 1952
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Marble Quarrying, BPL604, 1949-50
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BPL 664 Hear ye children (BPL664) Psalms, circa 1952
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Out of the depths – (BPL 662) 1952
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Miller (BPL 497)
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Cod Fishing, BPL613, 1949-50
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The letter ‘S’ from The Farmer’s Year, 1933
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The letter ‘G’ from The Farmer’s Year, 1933
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The Farmer’s Year, 1933
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The letter ‘M’ from The Farmer’s Year, 1933
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The letter ‘R’ from The Farmer’s Year, 1933