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New Year's Eve

As we wind down our winter work and settle in to await the New Year, we take a moment to consider the fruits of our labors over the past year and contemplate the coming of the new one. To help with that, on this last Wood Engraving Wednesday of 2025, we offer these engravings by English/American artist, writer, and illustrator Clare Leighton (1898-1989) from Clare Leighton’s Rural Life: An Anthology, published in Oxford by the Bodleian Library in 2023. The book was edited with an introduction by Leighton’s devoted nephew, David Leighton (1931-2022), who sadly did not live to see its publication. Clare Leighton was one of the most prolific and highly regarded wood engravers of her time, leaving behind a body of work that reflected her rural life in Britain and North America.

Claire Leighton was leery of growing urbanization in the 1920s and 1930s, as the Great Depression led to fears that many might never again earn a living from traditional work on the land. This is evident in the first engraving, Snow Shovelers (1929). The following engravings are part of a series documenting her time in a lumber camp on the Quebec-Ontario border in 1931. Her nephew writes:

At first the men of the camp were suspicious of this lone woman. However, when she hid her fear at the howling of the wolves and shared the men's food and some of their hardships she won their respect. They told her fantastic tales of Paul Bunyan . . . and she was able to make numerous pencil sketches and notes.

The text continues with excerpts from Claire Leighton's diary recounting her several outings with the lumberjacks in the dead of winter.

On this last, cold December night, we wish you a warm and safe New Year.