Clare Leighton
British, b.1898, d.1989
Apple Picking
- 1933
- Wood-engraving
- Presented by Mr Rex Nan Kivell, 1953
- 280 x 384mm
- 94/71
Tags: baskets (containers), fruit, ladders, men (male humans), monochrome, people (agents), trees, workers
Clare Leighton was a distinguished wood engraver in both England and America. Her parents, the popular fiction writers Marie Connor and Robert Leighton, influenced her to write and illustrate her own books. The two woodblocks shown here appear in her first book, The Farmer’s Year: A Calendar of English Husbandry, published in 1933. The Farmer’s Year illustrates the twelve months of the year on the Buckinghamshire farm where Leighton was living. These wood engravings illustrate threshing in March and apple-picking in September.
Leighton said: “Getting to know the farmers and working with them, I learned the pattern of the year as I shared the shepherds hut at lambing time. I stooked the grain at harvest and climbed ladders to pick apples. I had come home.” Leighton felt a great connection to rural life, finding this a more honest way of living than what workers experienced in the city. This outlook was similar to that of the earlier French realists such as Jean-François Millet, who created celebratory depictions of farm life at a time when many people were leaving the countryside and moving to urban areas.
(Leaving for Work, 2 October 2021 - 1 May 2022)
Exhibition History
Clare Leighton was a prolific wood engraver and a significant figure in the British wood engraving revival of the first half of the twentieth century. Much of her work was based on rural subjects which she often used to illustrate her own books. Apple Picking was one of twelve illustrations for The Farmer’s Year (1933). Leighton studied wood engraving under Noel Rooke at the Central School of Arts and Crafts, London. In 1932 she published an important manual on wood engraving techniques. Her work is noted for the intense contrasts between black and white. Leighton moved to the United States in 1939.
(Turn, Turn, Turn: A Year in Art, 27 July 2019 – 8 March 2020)
Clare Leighton was a prolific wood engraver and a significant figure in the British wood engraving revival of the first half of the 20th century. Much of her work was based on rural subjects which she often used to illustrate her own books. Apple Picking was one of twelve illustrations for The Farmer’s Year (1933). Leighton studied wood engraving under Noel Rooke at the Central School of Arts and Crafts, London. In 1932 she published an important manual on wood engraving techniques. Her work is noted for the intense contrasts between black and white. Leighton moved to the United States in 1939.