Sold
Clare Leighton
(1898 - 1989)
The original designs for Southern Harvest, circa 1941
Clare Leighton (1898 - 1989)
£5,000
Size:
Height – 8.8cm
Width – 6.9cm
1 in stock
The Reaper (BPL 221) appears as the title page of one of Clare Leighton’s
most celebrated books, The Farmer’s Year: A Calendar of English
Husbandry (1933). From Lambing’ in January to The Fat Stock
Market’ in December, Leighton’s text and full page engravings provide a
remarkable account of English farming before the advent of agribusiness.
Clare 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.
This engraving shows the labourer setting out to reap the harvest of a
whole year’s varied travail, to cut and gather by hand what today requires
the use of fuel wrung from the bowels of the earth. His right hand holds
the tip of the blade to keep it from damage and from harming any
passer-by. His left keeps the scythe neatly balanced on his shoulder; from
his waist hangs a sharpening stone which he will need to use again and
again as the work proceeds.
In addition to the artist’s personal acquaintance with the scythe
(always loath to portray what she had not herself experienced, she
learnt to ….stroke the grasses to their death’) we can be sure that its
constructional details are accurate. This illustrates one of Clare Leighton’s
dearest principles; any criticism from a farm worker would have shamed
her profoundly.
Commentary by David Leighton, Clare Leighton’s nephew and artistic executor. He is author of Clare Leighton: The Growth and Shaping of an Artist-Writer (2009).
We are grateful to David Leighton, the artist’s nephew and artistic executor for assistance.
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.
