The Lumber Camp - Limbing

Clare Leighton's Limbing pictures the laborious work of removing the branches of a felled tree to ready the trunk for processing at the sawmill. Poised on the giant trunk, a lumberjack wields an ax to hack off slender projecting limbs. Two other workers look on, their task of downing the tree done. One rests an arm on his left leg, supported on the stump on which a saw lies limply. At the top of the image, a fringe of spiky conifers peeps over the contour of the hill. Nearer trees cast long shadows across undulating mounds of drifted snow and protruding stumps. Set against areas of pure snow conveyed by the pristine white of the uninked paper, the blackest, most solidly inked areas define the underside of the tree and the wave-like leafy boughs at right, which are highlighted with white line "veins" denoting their thin branches. Hair-like lines indicate the plaid pattern on the jacket worn by the man standing at left. The delicacy of Leighton's lines underscores the boldness of her contrasts of light and dark.

Following Cutting (TF 1996.33.a), Limbing is the second print in Leighton's "Lumber Camp Series," depicting episodes of the lumberjacks' seasonal work life as they felled trees and made logs in a wintry wilderness. Leighton observed their activities during a 1930–31 visit to a lumber camp owned by the Canadian International Paper Company in the Laurentian Mountains of Quebec. She engraved her designs on wood blocks from sketches made on site. Newly established as a master of the wood-engraving medium, Leighton had already focused her attention on rural life and labor. Her interest in the theme of work was shared by many American artists during the 1930s, including fellow printmakers James Edward Allen (TF1995.23), Gifford Beal (TF 1996.76, TF 1996.77), and Benton Murdoch Spruance (TF 1995.47.a, TF 1995.47.b, TF 1995.47.c) , who, like Leighton, used a serial format to portray work in a narrative fashion.

On Process: The American Print, Technique Examined, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois (organizer). Venue: Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, January 13–March 2, 2001.

The People Work: American Perspectives, 1840–1940 (Le Travail à l'oeuvre: les artistes américains 1840–1940), Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois (organizer). Venues: Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, March 15–May 25, 2003; Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, France, June 8–August 17, 2003. [exh. cat.]

Manifest Destiny, Manifest Responsibility: Environmentalism and the Art of the American Landscape. Terra Foundation for American Art, Chicago, Illinois and Loyola University Museum of Art, Chicago, Illinois (organizers). Venue: Loyola University Museum of Art, May 17–August 10, 2008. [exh. cat.]

Hardie, Martin. "The Wood Engravings of Clare Leighton." The Print Collector's Quarterly 22 (April 1935). No. 195, p. 163; pp. 139-165.

Fletcher, William Dolan. Clare Leighton, An Exhibition: American Sheaves, English Seed Corn. (exh. cat., Boston Public Library). Boston, Massachusetts: Boston Public Library, 1978. No. 191.

Jaffe, Patricia. The Wood Engravings of Clare Leighton. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Silent Books, 1992. Nos. 39–43.

Brownlee, Peter John. Manifest Destiny / Manifest Responsibility: Environmentalism and the Art of the American Landscape. (exh. cat., Loyola University Museum of Art, Chicago, Illinois). Chicago, Illinois: Terra Foundation for American Art and Loyola University Museum of Art, 2008. Text p. 36 (checklist).