Clare Leighton
(1898 - 1988)

Born and raised in London, England, Clare Leighton began her career in the arts by attending the Slade School of Art at the University of London. Early on Leighton chose wood engraving as her medium and is best known for her illustrations of agrarian life in England, Europe and the American South. During her career she illustrated at least 65 books including The Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy. She also wrote and illustrated her own books such as The Farmers Year (1933), Four Hedges (1935), Country Matters (1937) and Southern Harvest (1942).

Clare Leighton immigrated to the United States in 1939 and set up home first in Baltimore, Maryland, then Durham, North Carolina and finally Woodbury, Connecticut. Leighton taught at Duke University while in Durham during the 1940's and was part of a group of cultural elite that included the poet Paul Green. The artist became a United States citizen in 1945 and earned an honorary Doctor of Fine Arts from Colby College in Waterville, Maine.

During her lifetime, Leighton was a member of numerous prestigious arts organizations including the National Institute of Arts and Letters in New York City, the National Academy of Design in New York City, the Royal Society of Painters, Etchers and Engravers in London and the Society of American Graphic Artists. She exhibited at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, the Art Institute of Chicago and received a major retrospective in 1977 from the Boston Public Library.

Engravings by Leighton are in collections of the Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Baltimore Museum of Art, and in both the Victoria and Albert and The British Museum in London.

Click here to view original artwork by Clare Leighton