Leighton R. Cram was born in 1895 in Newton, Massachusetts. He studied with landscape artists J. S. Ankeney and Charles Kaelin. A charter member of the Rockport Art Association, he exhibited in Boston, Gloucester and Rockport, Massachusetts and also participated in exhibitions in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and in New York City. Examples of his work may be found in the Whistler House Museum of Art in Lowell, Massachusetts.