There is some question about whether Clare Leighton was born in 1898 or in 1901.
Clare Leighton was born to a family of writers. Her father, Robert Leighton, wrote adventure novels for boys; her mother, Marie Floria Barbara Connor, wrote melodramatic pot boilers which were published in installments in the English newspapers. The family lived in St. John's Wood, the artistic and bohemian section of London. Clare was encouraged to study art by her father, and she studied at the Brighton School of Art and later at the Slade School of Fine Art, University of London. She then taught art to the poor at the London Country Council School.
In 1922 she began studying with Noel Rooke where she began to work in wood engraving, the medium to which she would devote her life. She received immediate recognition and began to publish her writings along with illustrations.
She began visiting the United States in the 1930s and settled there permanently in 1939, first living in Baltimore and then in North Carolina. While in North Carolina she taught at Duke University and illustrated The Frank C. Brown Collection of North Carolina Folklore.
Upon receiving a commission from Wedgewood to do a set of 12 designs of New England industries, she settled in Woodbury, Connecticut. In 1957 she was commissioned to do 33 stained glass windows for St. Paul Cathedral, Worcester, Massachusetts. Further stained glass work was done for Cornelia Morgan's home in Topsfield, Massachusetts (1962), for St. John's Lutheran Church in Waterbury, Conn (1964), and for the Methodist Church in Wellfleet, Mass (1966).
Leighton was a prolific writer as well as artist and wrote and illustrated numerous books, including: The Farmer's Year, A Calendar of English Husbandry (1933), Four Hedges: A Gardener's Chronicle (1935); Southern Harvest (1942), Where Land Meets Sea: The Tide Line of Cape Cod (1954). Her autobiography Tempestuous Petticoat: The Story of an Invincible Edwardian was published in 1947 and gives a fascinating picture of her early life.
She was nominated to the NAD by John Taylor Arms. When she submitted her prints to qualify as an Academician, she stated in a letter: "I have tried to make these six examples as representative of the different stages of my development as possible."
On her portrait of Leighton, Wright commented in the catalogue to her 1954 exhibition at Woodmere Art Gallery: "Do you know Clare Leighton's woodcuts? They are among the best in the world. When elected an Associate Academician one must give one's portrait to the Academy before one can qualify. This is Clare's. It took five days, eight hours a day, to paint. That's a block she is carving for Wedgewood--one of a set of New England Industries."
