September: Apple picking

Clare Leighton (1898-1989) was an English/American artist, writer and illustrator, best known for her wood engravings. Her early efforts at painting were encouraged by her parents and her uncle Jack Leighton, an artist and illustrator. In 1915, she began formal studies at the Brighton College of Art and later trained at the Slade School of Fine Art (1921-23), and the Central School of Arts and Crafts, where she studied wood engraving under Noel Rooke.

During the late 1920s and 1930s, Clare Leighton visited the United States on a number of lecture tours. In 1939, at the conclusion of a lengthy relationship with the radical journalist Henry Brailsford, she emigrated to the US and became a naturalised citizen in 1945. Over the course of a long and prolific career, she wrote and illustrated numerous books praising the virtues of the countryside and the people who worked the land. During the 1920s and 1930s, as the world around her became increasingly technological, industrial, and urban, Leighton portrayed rural working men and women - September: Apple Picking is a popular example of this. In the 1950s she created designs for Steuben Glass, Wedgwood plates, several stained glass windows for churches in New England and for the windows of Worcester Cathedral, Massachussetts (USA).

The best known of  Leighton's books are The Farmer's Year: A Calendar of English Husbandry (1933), from which this print comes, Four Hedges: A Gardener's Chronicle (1935), the development of a garden from a meadow she had bought in the Chiltern Hills, north-west of London, and Tempestuous Petticoat: The Story of an Invincible Edwardian (1948) describing her childhood and her bohemian mother. Books set in America and written after her emigration include Southern Harvest (1942) and Where Land meets Sea: the Tideline of Cape Cod (1953).

'Throughout the hot afternoon they pick', wrote Leighton, 'moving their ladders and baskets over the board of the orchard like counters in a game'. The scene of this wood-engraving is set in an orchard in Kent, traditionally known as the garden of England, and is one of Leighton's most popular prints. It was published in book form by her as illustrating the month of September in The Farmer's Year: A Calendar of English Husbandry (London, 1933). The plates comprise: January: lambing; February: lopping; March: threshing; April: sowing; May: sheep shearing; June: haymaking; July: cottage gardens; August: harvesting; September: apple picking; October: cider making; November: ploughing; and December: the Fat Stock Market.  The majority of these months are in Te Papa's collection, with two impressions of this print (see also Te Papa 1953-0003-173).

See:

The Bookroom Art Press, https://www.bookroomartpress.co.uk/product/leighton-clare-september-apple-picking/

Liss Llewellyn Fine Art, 'Clare Leighton', http://clareleighton.com/

Dr Mark Stocker   Curator, Historical International Art   May 2018