Born in London, Clare Leighton demonstrated an early interest in art. She studied at Brighton College of Art in Sussex and the Slade School of Fine Art in London where she discovered wood engraving, the medium she would pursue her whole life. She wrote and illustrated ‘The Farmer’ Year’ in 1933, one of number of major books. In 1939 she immigrated to the United States where she lived first in Chapel Hill, North Carolina and later in Woodbury, Connecticut. She taught at Duke University and continued to focus on rural farmers and workers as the core subject matter of her wood engravings.