Artist: Nicolas de Stael (Russian/French, 1914 - 1955). Title: "Paysage violet". Medium: Oil on canvas. Date: Composed 1949. Dimensions: Frame size: 18 x 24 in. (457 x 610 mm). Image size: 15 3/4 x 21 3/4 in. (400 x 552 mm). Lot Note(s): Signed lower right. Very good to fine condition with no notable issues. Collection(s): De Stael’s works are held in the collections of the Grand Palais in Paris, the Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C., and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, among others. Comment(s): A recent auction sale of a similar size de Stael oil on canvas (‘Lieux fuyants’) was at Christie’s Paris, December 3, 2019, lot #4, realizing €348,000 ($375,430). De Stael was born in St. Petersburg, Russia. The Revolution of 1919 necessitated his leaving Russia, travelling first to Poland and then Brussels, where he studied art. He travelled widely in the 1930s and settled in Paris in 1938. There he studied briefly under Fernand Léger and was acquainted with most of the leading artists of the day, including Henri Matisse, Georges Braque, and Max Ernst. After the Second World War de Stael earned a reputation as a leading abstract painter, using blocks of thick paint and tangled webs of lines in his work. In 1952 he began to reassert the importance of subject matter in his painting and moved away from using the impasto paint of his earlier paintings. Image copyright © ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London. [30118-14-60000]