The Lumber Camp - Landing

In Clare Leighton's Landing, four men unload logs from a sled drawn by a pair of horses whose heads, seen from behind, appear as silhouettes behind the log pile. Standing on it at different levels, the lumberjacks from a precarious pyramid as they undertake the dangerous task of prodding the weighty logs loose from the sled to roll down the slope and join a veritable river of lumber. The log-choked stream is set in an undulating landscape of rounded snow-covered hills interspersed with thickets of dense conifers. Logs harvested earlier, some now coated with snow, litter the foreground in casual disarray—arranged in Leighton's image, however, to draw the eye into the scene. The men's work is illustrated with a realist's attention to pose and detail. The landscape background, however, is playfully stylized in a manner reminiscent of the work of Leighton's contemporary Grant Wood, as seen in his January (TF 1995.54).

While in the United States on a lecturing tour in 1930–31, Leighton visited a Canadian International Paper Company lumber camp, where she observed the work and life recorded in her "Lumber Camp Series." The fourth print in the group, Landing shows the final stage in lumber harvesting. The hazardous unloading of the wood took place at the nearest waterway, the easiest means of transporting the weighty, unwieldy raw timber to the next site of lumber production, the sawmill. Invariably frozen in the bitter winter, the river would thaw in the springtime, carrying the accumulated logs downstream. Leighton suggests the weariness of the workers at this final stage of their labors by the bowed heads of three as they wedge metal prods between the logs to begin the rolling descent. Virtually faceless, they are anonymous embodiments of bodily toil, a theme Leighton had often previously explored in her images of English rural life.

Visions of a Nation: Exploring Identity through American Art, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois (organizer). Venue: Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, August 10, 1996–January 12, 1997.

(Re)Presenting Women, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois (organizer). Venue: Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, October 16, 2001–January 13, 2002.

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. 197, 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. 195.

Jaffe, Patricia. The Wood Engravings of Clare Leighton. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Silent Books, 1992. No. 42.

Bourguignon, Katherine M. and Elizabeth Kennedy. The People Work: American Perspectives, 1840–1940. (exh. cat., Terra Museum of American Art). Chicago, Illinois: Terra Foundation for the Arts, 2003. Text p. 29 (checklist); ill. p. 51 (color). [specific reference to Terra print]

Bourguignon, Katherine M. and Elizabeth Kennedy. Le Travail à l'oeuvre: les artistes américains, 1840–1940. (exh. cat., Terra Museum of American Art). Chicago, Illinois: Terra Foundation for the Arts, 2003. Text p. 29 (checklist); ill. p. 51 (color). [specific reference to Terra print]

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).