: The Mint Museums recently received a collection of more than 180
woodcuts, watercolors and drawings by artist-illustrator, Clare
Leighton (1898-1989), given by dedicated museum member and
collector Gabby Pratt.
Pratt's interest in collecting prints started in the mid-1980s
after a visit to a gallery in Binghamton, N.Y., where a print by
Thomas Nason caught her attention and purse strings. A subsequent
Mint Museum of Art lecture by Sinclair Hitchings, keeper of the
print collection at the Boston Public Library, fueled her
curiosity in printmaking. About this time, former curator Jane
Kessler organized a print study group, later known as the North
Carolina Print & Drawing Society or NCPDS, to foster the
study, appreciation and collecting of fine prints. She advised
Pratt to focus her collecting on the work of one artist and
suggested Clare Leighton.
Since her first purchase in 1984 of Leighton's wood engraving
"The Bean Planters," Pratt has been a dedicated, focused and
well-informed collector. She was attracted to the way Leighton
depicted the motion and rhythm of pastoral tradition in her
prints and thought, "Why stop at one?" As the organizer of the
NCPDS "print fairs," Pratt developed relationships with many of
the print dealers and soon became known as the collector of
Leighton's work.
British-born Leighton is best known for her black and white wood
engravings. The collection donated by Pratt not only contains
examples of her intricate, finely detailed prints, but also
numerous drawings and rarely seen watercolors, spanning
Leighton's career from 1923 to 1965.
Unique to this collection are 12 Wedgwood transfer-printed plates
based on Leighton's wood engraving series "New England
Industries." The donation also includes 12 books relating to
Leighton's career as author and illustrator.
Leighton, born into an artistic family, studied wood engraving in
England before moving to the United States during World War II.
Settling first in Baltimore, she moved to Chapel Hill in 1943 and
served as a visiting art lecturer at Duke University in Durham,
N.C., 1943-1945. During her career Leighton wrote 15 books and
created more than 700 prints.
A future exhibition will focus on Leighton's achievements in the
field of printmaking through her images of preindustrial labor,
advocating the virtue of hard work, love of the land and the
rhythms of nature.
The Mint Museum of Art is at 2730 Randolph Road; the Mint
Museum of Craft + Design is at 220 North Tryon Street. For
Information, 704-337-2000 or mintmuseum.org.
