In addition to the busy street scenes, Lesser Ury, known to many as the painter of Berlin city life, also created a number of landscape paintings that show a completely different, much more fascinating side of his gift. Ury spent his student years at the Art Academy in Düsseldorf and at the Académie royale des Beaux-Arts in Brussels, followed by a short stay in Paris and trips to Flanders and Munich. In 1887 he returned to Berlin, where he finally settled and began to explore the city with his paintings of impressionistic and atmospheric scenes. In 1890, on the recommendation of Adolph Menzel, he received the Michael Beer Prize from the Berlin Academy of Arts. Associated with this was a scholarship that enabled him to travel through Italy for several months. His landscapes represent a category in his work for which he has developed a language of his own. Deserted and filled with the crystalline clarity of the southern light, the view of the rocky coast of Capri opens up here. The Faraglioni, the island’s picturesque attraction, are evoked only associatively. It seems that Ury was rather fascinated by the transparency of water, spray and sky, which merge in the colors. Prismatic refractions of light appear in the water and sky as little spots of turquoise, pink and yellow. In such an atmospheric resolution in the picture, he created an equivalent to the actual impression of nature, which allows the viewer to immerse in it.

At the time of the artist's death, the painting " Felsenküste bei Capri" was in his Berlin studio. It was first offered at auction on October 21, 1932, as part of the estate sale at the renowned Galerie Paul Cassirer in Berlin. As it remained unsold at that point, it was returned to Ury's heirs. The brothers Kurt and Adalbert Ury obtained this remarkable work, which was listed under the estate number 115, in January 1933. This number is still visible on the back of the painting today.
All of Ury's heirs were Jewish and hence persecuted by the Nazis. Whether the painting accompanied them on their emigration remains uncertain, as there is no respective documentation. To this day, the fate of the painting remains a fascinating mystery. It was not until 1994 that this peculiar work from unknown ownership reappeared at an auction in Tel Aviv. We are delighted about the opportunity to offer this extraordinary painting subject to an amicable agreement with the heirs of Kurt and Adalbert Ury and free of any restitution claims. [KT/CFN]