Tourrettes-sur-Loup

Today the hilltop town of Tourrettes-sur-Loup in southern France looks a lot like it did when Norma Bassett Hall saw it in 1926. Situated near the Mediterranean Sea, the village was a favorite target of invaders in ancient times, which is why it is surrounded by thick, high walls. (In the town’s name, sur means “on, ” and Loup refers to a nearby river.) Hall seems to have just skimmed her woodblocks with color to imitate the rusticated look of medieval stone. Rather than outline the architecture and landscape in black, a feature of the Japanese woodblock prints she admired, she softened the sheet by printing the details a brownish clay color. The purplish color in the upper sky could have been Hall’s way of evoking the town’s most famous industry: growing violets.