# Clare Leighton > Mediated Wiki article. Canonical URL: https://mediated.wiki/source/Clare_Leighton > Markdown URL: https://mediated.wiki/source/Clare_Leighton.md > Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clare_Leighton > Source revision: 1351928240 > License: Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/) {{short description|English-born American artist}} {{Use dmy dates|date=August 2023}} {{Infobox artist | name = Clare Leighton | birth_name = Clare Marie Veronica Leighton | birth_date = {{Birth date|1898|04|12|df=yes}} | birth_place = London, England, United Kingdom | death_date = {{Death date and age|1989|11|04|1898|04|12|df=yes }} | resting_place = Waterbury, Connecticut, United States | alma_mater = Brighton College of Art, Slade School of Fine Art, Central School of Arts and Crafts | known_for = Wood engravings }} '''Clare Marie Veronica Leighton''', sometimes '''Clara Ellaline Hope Leighton''' or '''Clare Veronica Hope Leighton''', (12 April 1898 – 4 November 1989) was an English–American artist, writer and illustrator, best known for her [wood engraving](/source/wood_engraving)s.{{Cite book |last1=Lehnebach |first1=Carlos A. |url=https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q124332398 |title=Flora: Celebrating our Botanical World |last2=Regnault |first2=Claire |last3=Rice |first3=Rebecca |last4=Awa |first4=Isaac Te |last5=Yates |first5=Rachel A. |date=2023-11-01 |publisher=Te Papa Press |isbn=978-1-9911509-1-2 |pages=144–145 |language=English}} ==Early life and education== Clare Leighton was born in London on 12 April 1898,Campbell, 2004 the daughter of [Robert Leighton](/source/Robert_Leighton_(author)) (1858–1934) and [Marie Connor Leighton](/source/Marie_Connor_Leighton) (1867–1941), both authors. She was baptised with the name Clare Marie Veronica Leighton on 26 May 1898 at All Saints' Church in [St John's Wood](/source/St_John's_Wood).{{citation needed|date=May 2020}} Clare lived her early life in the shadow of her elder brother, [Roland](/source/Roland_Leighton) – her mother's favourite; the family nickname for Clare was "the bystander". Her mother was dismissive of Clare's looks, ambitions and talents,{{ cite web |last=Leighton |first=David |title=Clare Leighton: Her Family Foundations |website=Traditional Fine Arts Organization, Inc. |date=8 August 2008 |url=http://www.tfaoi.com/aa/8aa/8aa160.htm |access-date=5 April 2020 }} while she said of Roland that: "He is the only one of my children who is beautiful enough to be worth dressing".{{ cite book |last=Leighton |first=Clare |title=Tempestuous Petticoat |pages=203 |date=1947 |publisher=Academy Chicago, Publishers |location=Chicago }} Nevertheless, Clare's 1947 biography of her mother ''Tempestuous Petticoat: the story of an Invincible Edwardian''{{ cite book |last=Leighton |first=Clare |title=Tempestuous Petticoat |date=1947 |publisher=Rinehard & Co., Inc. |location=New York |url=https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.59630/page/n9/mode/2up |access-date=8 April 2020 }} succeeded in "making her readers envy this fantastic mother, even share some of the affection which she feels for her".{{ cite journal |title=Our Bookshelf |journal=The Sketch |issue=Wednesday 3 March 1948 |pages=24 |date=3 March 1948 }} Her early efforts at painting were encouraged by her father and her uncle Jack Leighton, an artist and illustrator. Clare and her uncle made several sketching trips together to mainland Europe. In 1915, Leighton began formal studies at the [Brighton College of Art](/source/University_of_Brighton_School_of_Art) and later trained at the [Slade School of Fine Art](/source/Slade_School_of_Fine_Art) (1921–1923) and the [Central School of Arts and Crafts](/source/Central_School_of_Arts_and_Crafts), where she studied wood engraving under [Noel Rooke](/source/Noel_Rooke). After completing her studies, Leighton took time to travel through Europe, stopping in Italy, France and the Balkans. She sketched landscapes and peasant workers, developing an affinity for portraying rural life.{{cite web|title=Clare Leighton [1898 – 1989]|url=http://www.bookroomartpress.co.uk/biographies/18.html|website=The Bookroom Art Press|access-date=23 September 2014 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140903072422/http://www.bookroomartpress.co.uk/biographies/18.html|archive-date=3 September 2014|url-status=dead}} ==Career== [[File:Clare Leighton - Harvest - B2014.31.1 - Yale Center for British Art.jpg|thumb|Clare Leighton "Harvest" (between 1926 and 1933), a lithograph in the [Yale Center for British Art](/source/Yale_Center_for_British_Art)]] During the late 1920s and 1930s, Leighton visited the United States on a number of lecture tours, emigrating to the US in 1939. In 1930, the [Art Institute of Chicago](/source/Art_Institute_of_Chicago) awarded her with the Mr. And Mrs. Frank G. Logan First Prize ($100). She lived in [Baltimore](/source/Baltimore) for a while and became friends with [H. L. Mencken](/source/H._L._Mencken).Leighton, Cynthia, "Cynical Fantasy", ''Menckeniana Quarterly Review'' No. 35 (Fall 1970), at 1. Mencken's letters to Leighton are preserved at the Enoch Pratt Free Library in Baltimore, Maryland. Leighton became a naturalised citizen in 1945. From 1943 to 1945 she was a member of the Department of Art, Aesthetics, and Music at [Duke University](/source/Duke_University).{{Cite web|url=http://library.duke.edu/rubenstein/findingaids/leightonclare/#collectionoverview|title=Guide to the Clare Leighton Papers, 1940–1968|website=David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library|access-date=24 September 2016}} In 1945 she was elected into the [National Academy of Design](/source/National_Academy_of_Design) as an Associate member and became a full Academician in 1949. Over the course of a long and prolific career, Leighton wrote and illustrated numerous books praising the virtues of the countryside and the people who worked the land. In 1932, she was the first woman to produce a book on wood-engraving, ''Wood-Engraving and Woodcuts''. This played an important part in popularizing the medium.{{Cite journal|date=Winter 2013–2014|title=Clare Leighton:From Pencil to Proof to Press|journal=Virginia Museum of Fine Arts|pages=20}} During the 1920s and 1930s, as the world around her became increasingly technological, industrial and urban, Leighton continued to paint rural working men and women. These included a 1938 poster design for [London Transport](/source/London_Passenger_Transport_Board) promoting weekend walks in the countryside.{{cite book|author=David Bownes|publisher=[London Transport Museum](/source/London_Transport_Museum)|year=2018|title=Poster Girls |isbn=978-1-871829-28-0}} In the 1950s she created designs for [Steuben Glass](/source/Steuben_Glass_Works), [Wedgwood](/source/Wedgwood) plates, several stained-glass windows for churches in [New England](/source/New_England) and for the transept windows of the [Cathedral of Saint Paul (Worcester, Massachusetts)](/source/Cathedral_of_Saint_Paul_(Worcester%2C_Massachusetts)).{{Cite book |last=Bluemel |first=Kristin |title=Enchanted Wood: Engraving a Place for Women Artists in Rural Britain |date=2026 |publisher=University of Minnesota Press |isbn=978-1-5179-1477-6 |edition=1 |location=Minneapolis}} The best known of her books are ''The Farmer's Year'' (1933; a calendar of English husbandry), ''Four Hedges – A Gardener's Chronicle'' (1935; the development of a garden from a meadow she had bought in the [Chilterns](/source/Chilterns)) and ''Tempestuous Petticoat; The story of an Invincible Edwardian'' (1948; describing her childhood and her bohemian mother). Autobiographical text and illustrations are available in ''Clare Leighton: The growth and shaping of an artist-writer'', published in 2009. One of her most notable illustrative endeavors was creating 16 woodcuts for Thornton Wilder's illustrated edition of ''The Bridge of San Luis Rey'' (Longmans, Green and Company 1929). Examples of her work were included in 'Print and Prejudice: Women Printmakers, 1700-1930', an exhibition at the [Victoria and Albert Museum](/source/Victoria_and_Albert_Museum) in London during 2022 and 2023.{{Cite web |title=V&A · Print and Prejudice: Women Printmakers, 1700 – 1930 - Display at South Kensington |url=https://www.vam.ac.uk/exhibitions/print-and-prejudice-women-printmakers-1700-1930 |access-date=12 November 2022 |website=Victoria and Albert Museum |language=en}} Three of Leighton's woodcuts for [H. R. Williamson](/source/Hugh_Ross_Williamson)'s ''The Flowering Hawthorn'' (1962) were selected by Adam Stout to illustrate his 2020 book on the Glastonbury Thorn.Stout, Adam (2020) ''Glastonbury Holy Thorn: Story of a Legend'' Green & Pleasant Publishing, pp. 22, 25, 41 {{ISBN| 978-1-9162686-1-6}} Several of Leighton's prints were included in the 2025 [Clark Art Institute](/source/Clark_Art_Institute)'s exhibition ''A Room of Her Own: Women Artists-Activists in Britain, 1875-1945''.{{Cite web |title=A Room of Her Own: Women Artists-Activists in Britain, 1875-1945 |url=https://www.clarkart.edu/microsites/a-room-of-her-own/about-the-exhibition/introduction |access-date=2025-09-10 |website=www.clarkart.edu}} ==Personal life== Leighton had two brothers: the elder, [Roland Leighton](/source/Roland_Leighton), was killed in action in December 1915, and is immortalised in [Vera Brittain](/source/Vera_Brittain)'s memoir, ''[Testament of Youth](/source/Testament_of_Youth)''; the younger Evelyn, a Royal Navy officer, received the OBE in 1942. Leighton met the radical journalist [H. N. Brailsford](/source/H._N._Brailsford) in 1928, and they lived together for several years. He was separated from [Jane Esdon Brailsford](/source/Jane_Esdon_Brailsford) who refused him a divorce.F. M. Leventhal, 'Brailsford, Jane Esdon (1874–1937)', ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'', Oxford University Press, 2004 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/56223, accessed 10 Nov 2017] When Brailsford's wife died in 1937, leaving the way clear for the couple to marry, he suffered an emotional breakdown, destroying his relationship with Leighton who left for a new life in the US in 1939. She never married. Leighton died 4 November 1989. Her ashes are buried in a cemetery in [Waterbury, Connecticut](/source/Waterbury%2C_Connecticut). ==References== {{Reflist|2}} ==Further reading== * Colin Campbell, 'Leighton, Clara Ellaline Hope (1898–1989)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 *[http://clara.nmwa.org/index.php?g=entity_detail&entity_id=5026 NMWA biography] * Kristin Bluemel, ''Enchanted Wood: Engraving a Place for Women Artists in Rural Britain'', University of Minnesota Press, 2026. ==External links== *[http://www.maiermuseum.org/?p=912 Maier Museum at Randolph College, Clare Leighton] *[http://library.duke.edu/rubenstein/findingaids/leightonclare/ Guide to the Clare Leighton Papers at Duke University] *{{Internet Archive author |sname=Leighton, Clare}} {{Authority control}} {{DEFAULTSORT:Leighton, Clare}} Category:1898 births Category:1989 deaths Category:Alumni of the Central School of Art and Design Category:Alumni of the Slade School of Fine Art Category:20th-century American engravers Category:American women printmakers Category:Artists from the London Borough of Camden Category:English emigrants to the United States Category:20th-century English engravers Category:English women engravers Category:20th-century English illustrators Category:20th-century American illustrators Category:English printmakers Category:English wood engravers Category:Duke University faculty Category:National Academy of Design members Category:20th-century American women artists Category:20th-century British printmakers Category:American women engravers Category:Members of the American Academy of Arts and Letters Category:20th-century American women academics Category:Alumni of the University of Brighton Category:People from St John's Wood --- Adapted from the Wikipedia article [Clare Leighton](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clare_Leighton) by Wikipedia contributors ([contributor history](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clare_Leighton?action=history)). Available under [Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/). Changes may have been made.