The Lumber Camp - Loading

Clare Leighton's Loading shows a rugged lumberjack crew rolling and hoisting logs onto the sled that, pulled by an unseen team of horses, will transport them through the snowy forest on the beginning of their journey to the sawmill. While four men are engrossed in the backbreaking labor of moving the heavy logs, a fifth stands atop the loaded pile like a mountaineer who has conquered a steep climb. Daylight just begins to illuminate the bearded face and clothing of each logger as he labors in the biting cold. The image precisely details the process of log loading while offering a complex abstract design in the echoing series of diagonal lines and columnar forms, from the gathered logs and the poles up which they are laboriously moved, in the foreground, to the clustered trunks of still-standing trees that spread their shadows across the drifted mounds of pristine snow. Leighton even animates the negative space between the top logger's legs: shadows stripe the snow along with two chains taut with the weight of the gathered cargo.

In the winter of 1930–31, while on a lecturing tour of the United States, Leighton visited a logging camp in the Laurentian Mountains of Quebec owned by the Canadian International Paper Company to observe the lumberjacks at work and rest. From sketches made on site she engraved the wood blocks for the six prints in her "Lumber Camp Series." The third print in the series, Loading follows Cutting (TF 1996.33a) and Limbing (TF 1996.33b). Leighton chose Loading to illustrate the stages of making a wood engraving in her 1932 manual Wood-Engraving and Woodcuts, in which she included three trial proofs of the print to demonstrate the development of the design on the single wood block.

By the early 1930s, Leighton had established herself as a master wood-engraver by her print images of rural life and nature. The Canadian forest setting of her "Lumber Camp Series" was a departure for an artist associated with English subject matter, but Leighton had already demonstrated an interest in the theme of bodily toil. As the decade matured, many artists, including numerous printmakers, were drawn to the subject of the worker in industrial, agricultural, and maritime settings, as demonstrated in prints by 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.]

Leighton, Clare. Wood-Engraving and Woodcuts. London, England: The Studio, Ltd., 1932. [See pages 28–33 for text and illustrations of Loading, which is used as an example to show first proof, second proof, third and final proof.]

Hardie, Martin. "The Wood Engravings of Clare Leighton." The Print Collector's Quarterly 22 (April 1935). No. 198, 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. 194.

Jaffe, Patricia. The Wood Engravings of Clare Leighton. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Silent Books, 1992. No. 41.

Master Prints of Five Centuries: The Alan and Marianne Schwartz Collection. (exh. cat., The Detroit Institute of Arts). Detroit, Michigan: Founders Society, The Detroit Institute of Arts, 1990. No. 60, p. 84.

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).