URY, LESSER
1861 Birnbaum–1931 Berlin

Title: Burg am Fluss (Abendstimmung, Burg Saaleck).
Date: 1904/05.
Technique: Oil on canvas.
Measurement: 70 x 100 cm.
Notation: Signed lower right: L. Ury. Estate label (faded) verso upper left with the registered number: 124.
Frame: Framed.



Provenance:
- - Estate Lesser Ury (inventory number of the artistic estate dated 21.11.1931, no. 124)

- Galerie Paul Cassirer, Berlin, auction 21.10.1932, no. 47 (there titled: Der Fuchsturm bei Jena, Abendstimmung; unsold)

- Max und Amalia Intrator, Zürich/New York (acquired in 1939 at the latest)

- Private ownership USA (by inheritance)

- William Doyle, New York, auction 11.05.2022, lot 25

- Private collection Lower Saxony


Exhibition:
- Exhib. cat. Lesser Ury. Gedenk Ausstellung, Nationalgalerie Berlin, 1931, cat. no. 104 (here titled: Der Fuchsturm bei Jena)



- Atmospherically vibrant landscape - masterful lighting mood beyond the Berlin street scenes

- Suspenseful contrast of a dark sillhouette and brilliant evening sky - intense and vivid

- Exhibited at the Nationalgalerie Berlin in 1931 – significant presentation in the artist's year of death



Lesser Ury, painter and graphic artist, is regarded as one of the defining yet highly individual representatives of German Impressionism. Born in Birnbaum (today Międzychód), he spent formative years studying in Düsseldorf, Brussels, and Paris before settling permanently in Berlin in 1887, where he lived and worked in relative seclusion. It was there that he developed his distinctive artistic language. Ury’s work is characterized by an exceptionally sensitive treatment of light and atmosphere. He became particularly renowned for his nocturnal street scenes, in which the electric lights of the modern metropolis are reflected on rain-soaked asphalt. Despite early tensions with the Berlin art scene, he established himself as a significant chronicler of modernity. Stylistically, Ury’s work moves between Impressionism and a heightened, deeply subjective evocation of mood and landscape, anticipating developments of the twentieth century.

The painting offered here depicts a poetically condensed landscape near Jena. Against the luminous glow of an evening sky, the silhouette of a castle emerges along a ridge. The foreground is defined by a gently flowing body of water, in which the light of the sky is reflected, softly dissolving the dark contours of the riverbanks. The composition derives its force from the contrast between the nearly black, monumental landscape and the warm, golden-yellow radiance of the sky, which continues in shimmering reflections across the water.

Within Ury’s oeuvre, this work occupies a distinctive place. It presents him not as a painter of urban modernity, but as the creator of a quiet, contemplative vision of nature. Nevertheless, the central theme of his artistic practice—the play of light—remains decisive. Its inclusion in the 1931 memorial exhibition of the Nationalgalerie underscores the art-historical significance of this remarkable example of his landscape painting.


Literature:





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#Lesser Ury #Impressionism #Berlin Secession #Germany #Modern Art #1900s #Oil #Modern Art.







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