The Lumber Camp - Resting

Six rugged lumberjacks warm themselves around the wood-burning stove that dominates a rustic log cabin interior in Clare Leighton's Resting. Two men lounge on bunk beds at the left, while along the back wall another smokes his pipe. Three more huddled to the right of the stove are partly cloaked in shadow. A hanging lamp casts a raking light over the scene, throwing into somewhat grotesque relief the men's rough features and such details of the setting as the crude floor of still-rounded logs and drying socks hanging from the ceiling rafters. Near the bottom edge of the image, a sleeping cat nestles in a box, underscoring the companionable peace enjoyed by the work-weary lumberjacks. Leighton used areas of solid black and thin etched lines to convey dense, distorting shadows in a composition defined by strong diagonals, notably the stove's angled chimney, the rafter glimpsed at the upper left, and the shadows cast by lamp and stove.

Resting is the fifth in Leighton's "Lumber Camp Series" of six wood engravings based on her visit to a Canadian lumber camp in the winter of 1930–31. It departs from the first four images, which show the men laboring in the frigid woods, but suggests that the cramped setting of their brief leisure is as inhospitable as the cold outdoors in which they work. Barely individualized in the outdoor scenes, in which they are often shown with their backs toward the viewer or hunched over in their grueling labor, the lumberjacks are distinguishable in Resting by their various poses and by the strong facial features and distinct hairstyles and clothing of the three facing the viewer.

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