Norma Bassett Hall (1889-1957) � Game Creek Bridge � Silkscreen, ca. 1929, ed. unknown, 11 x 14, signed and titled in margin, initialed in plate. This is a beautiful piece in excellent condition.

$875.00

Norma Bassett Hall is best known as a color printmaker of Great Plains, Southwestern, and European landscapes.

Born in Halsey, Oregon, Bassett Hall took three years of study at the Portland Art Association. After teaching for several years she enrolled at the Chicago Art Institute in 1915 and graduated in 1918. She returned to Portland in 1920, opened a studio, and taught art in high school. In 1922 she married Arthur Hall, who had been a fellow student at the Art Institute. The couple settled in El Dorado, Kansas where Arthur had been working.

The Halls became active in a group of central Kansas artists which included several well-known printmaker including Birger Sandzen, C.A. Seward, and Charles Capps. It was during these early years in Kansas that Bassett Hall explored the artistic possibilities of woodblock printing using opaque, oil-based inks.

The Halls spent two years in Europe, from 1925 to 1927, sketching and studying, primarily in France and Britain. In Scotland, they met the noted etcher E.S. Lumsden and his wife, Mabie Royds, a woodblock printmaker. Royds taught Bassett Hall the Japanese techniques of block printing with transparent, water-based inks. Norma and Arthur both studied in Lumsden and Royds' studio for about a year.