Lesser Ury

Lesser Ury, born in Birnbaum in the province of Posen (now Poznan, Poland), the son of a Jewish baker, was a German painter who distinguished himself in depicting Berlin’s urban life in colourful Impressionism, focusing on the streets and coffee houses of the big city. Although a running feud with Max Liebermann - his senior in age and rank, and chairman of the Berliner Secession movement - substantially hindered his artistic career, his fame grew over the years with numerous exhibitions, including at the Berliner Secession in 1922 and in the Berlin National Gallery in 1931.

In 2019, the Liebermann-Villa in Berlin featured the artist’s oeuvre in dialogue with Max Liebermann’s, presenting both artists, despite their personal animosity, as being renowned chroniclers of Weimar-era Berlin.

Aged 16, Lesser Ury studied at the Düsseldorf Academy, before continuing his education in Brussels, Paris, and Munich. After settling in Berlin in 1887, he started painting atmospheric street views, usually illuminated by the evening twilight. Electric lighting was becoming more commonplace at the time and Ury’s evening and night scenes often capture car headlights and streetlamps, cutting through the darkness.

The artist was also a frequent guest at the Café Bauer, which had electric lighting as early as 1884, thanks to a generator developed by Werner von Siemens. The café represented a new way of life, something evident in the global array of periodicals available for its guests to browse.

As well as finding much to inspire and beguile in the newly electrified metropolis, Ury also repeatedly returned to the countryside, to address landscapes, throughout his career. Here, too, the light and mirages are particularly impressive. Despite his artistic connection to Berlin, Ury repeatedly undertook trips to London and Paris, from which he brought back a large number of paintings. In 1890, the Michael Beer Prize allowed him also to travel to Italy.

In the immediate aftermath of Ury’s death in 1931, numerous paintings were auctioned by the Paul Cassirer auction house, entering private collections worldwide. Nowadays, Ury’s works can be found in public collections at Jüdisches Museum Berlin, Berlinische Galerie, Städel Museum in Frankfurt am Main, the Pinakothek Munich and National Gallery of Art in Washington and many more.