VASSILIEFF (RUSSIAN SCHOOL, FIRST HALF OF THE 20TH CENTURY) Winter landscape with a man on a sledge

signed ‘Vasilieff’ (lower right); label and stamp ‘L’Art de la Vieille Russie / Société des Artistes Peintres émigrés de Russie en France /en souvenir à M. de Vernon de la part des artistes peintres émigrés de Russie’ (on the reverse) oil on canvas laid on board 24.5 x 33.5 cm Provenance: Société des Artistes Peintres Émigrés de Russie en France, Paris Gift to M. de Vernon Private collection The Society of Russian Émigré Painters in France was an artistic association founded in Paris in the 1920s. It brought together Russian painters and graphic artists who had fled the October Revolution and settled in France. The organisation played a central role in the cultural life of the Russian émigré community and in Franco-Russian artistic exchanges during the interwar period. Among its members were artists associated with the Mir Iskusstva as well as the Russian realist tradition, including Ivan Bilibin, Mstislav Dobuzhinsky, Konstantin Somov, and Marc Chagall. The seal ‘L’Art de la Vieille Russie’ was used at exhibitions of Russian art organised in Paris by the Russian diaspora, particularly between the 1920s and 1935.