Leighton, Claire
(1898-1988)
“The Surf Casters”

Artist Biography

Clare Veronica Hope Leighton (1898-1988)

Born/lived: London, England, Long Island, Baltimore, Chapel Hill, NC, Woodbury, CT.

Known: writer and illustrator, designer, lecturer, painter, and printmaker of woodcuts, and wood engravings of market scenes, genre and docks. Designed for Wedgwood and Steuben Glass, and designed windows for churches and cathedrals.

Studied: the Central School of Art and Design where she learned the art of wood engraving under Noel Rook. The Slade School of the University of London, and earned an honorary Doctor of Fine Arts from Colby College in Waterville, Maine.

Member: National Institute of Arts and Letters in New York City; an academician of the National Academy of Design in New York City; a fellow of the Royal Society of Painters, Etchers and Engravers in London; and the Society of American Graphic Artists, Honorary Fellow of the Society of Designer-Craftsmen.

Exhibited: the Society of Wood Engravers whose members included Eric Gill, Robert Gibbings, and John Nash. Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts; the Art Institute of Chicago; and the Boston Public Library held a major retrospective in 1977.

Work: in the collections of the Whistler House Museum of Art in Lowell, MA; the Museum of Modern Art in New York City; the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City; the Art Institute of Chicago in IL; the Cleveland Museum of Art in OH; the Mobile Museum of Art in Mobile, AL; the Lowe Art Museum in Coral Gables, FL; the Cummer Museum of Art and Gardens in Jacksonville, FL; the Michael C. Carlos Museum in Atlanta, GA; the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, MA; the Baltimore Museum of Art in MD; the Frederick R. Weisman Art Museum in Minneapolis, MN; the Southern Alleghenies Museum of Art in Loretto, PA; and the Print Club of Albany in NY.

Publications: By 1927 Leighton began illustrating the works of authors such as Thornton Wilder and Thomas Hardy, and, between 1930 and 1976, she authored and illustrated a number of books.