The Lumber Camp - Breaking Camp

In a woodsy, snow-covered landscape, two horses stand poised to pull a large sleigh packed with sacks and boxes of gear and other furnishings, including an empty wooden supply barrel now bearing a broom and a pair of shovels, in Clare Leighton's Breaking Camp. A driver sits at the front of the sleigh; behind an upended chair perched on the cargo, two men huddle amid sacks and buckets. The dark curving form of the overloaded sleigh seems poised to sweep away into the right distance, where snow-mounded hillocks enfold a narrow track that disappears into the dark woods. After a long winter of logging and living in the rugged wilderness, the crew is ready to depart the lumber camp, indicated by log cabins almost buried in the snow. Icicles hanging from the eaves hint at the spring thaw to come. At right, cartoon-like shadows cast by the broom, shovels, and chair legs, curving with the contours of the snow mound, exemplify Leighton's attention to detail and eye for subtle humor. The artist used her wood engraving technique to indicate a full range of light and dark effects, from the delicate shadows on the undulating surface of the snow to the deep blackness of the blank cabin doors.

Breaking Camp is the final work in Leighton's six-print "Lumber Camp Series," which follows the strenuous life of the (TF 1995.47.a, TF 1995.47.b, TF 1995.47.c) eral important literary works. Her focus on aspects of work through scenes showing generic laborers found a parallel in other artists' images, particularly during the 1930s. Indeed, later in that decade, Benton Murdoch Spruance used a similar serial format to picture ordinary urbanites in transit in his three-print lithograph series "The People Work" (TF 1995.47.a, TF 1995.47.b, TF 1995.47.c).  Leighton, however, used her "Lumber Camp Series" to picture the remote, challenging setting and demands of bodily strength and skill of a specialized job of which few viewers would have had first-hand experience.

(Re)Presenting Women, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois (organizer). Venues: 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. 196, 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. 192.

Jaffe, Patricia. The Wood Engravings of Clare Leighton. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Silent Books, 1992. No. 39.

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).