Lesser Ury - Painter on a Roman road. Oil on canvas,... Lot 700

Lesser Ury - Painter on a Roman road. Oil on canvas, mounted. 1890. ca. 41 x 30,5 cm. Signed and dated lower right. - Early work, created during a year-long study trip to Italy in 1890 - Without preliminary studies in "Prima vista" manner painted on the spot - Interplay of glistening sunlight and dark shadow areas Dr. Sibylle Groß writes in her expert opinion of 2.11.2022: "The painting was created during a longer stay of the painter in Rome. In 1890 the Berlin Academy of Arts had awarded the Michael Beer Prize to Lesser Ury. As the winner of the prize, he received a scholarship for a one-year study trip to Italy with the condition that he spend eight months in Rome. The Michael Beer Prize, which had been awarded annually by the Academy since 1834, was in the tradition of the 'Rome trip', which was a constitutive part of the training of young artists in the 19th century. Rome, however, gave Lesser Ury the impression of a city ossified by its cultural heritage, which had nothing new or modern to offer him. Lesser Ury, who - if one believes his travel report to the Academy - frequented the public galleries and museums, could not appreciate older art. So it is not surprising that no works of his have survived that reflect and reproduce influences of painting in Rome, let alone copy them. His letters to his friend Franz Hermann Meißner (1863-1925), a Berlin literary figure and art writer, eloquently reveal how Lesser Ury perceived Rome at the time, what moved him inwardly there: "Rome is an old garbage heap on which a fresh life cannot thrive. I have scolded Berlin, but there at least there is movement, striving for something better, a nervous pressing forward, but here Rafael and Roman garbage heap, in short dead and thrice dead." If nothing else, Ury felt isolated in the midst of Rome: "Here I have no models, know not an atom of language..." So it is not surprising that art historians at the time judged the trip to Italy in 1890/91 for Lesser Ury artistically without much influence. Already in 1895 the Berlin art historian and publicist Oscar Bie (1864-1938) wrote: "Ury went to Rome. But this world slid past him without impression." Rome's cityscape, however, did not remain without effect on Lesser Ury. He painted Rome from the point of view of the flâneur: St. Peter's Square with St. Peter's Basilica, the Colosseum, the Arch of Titus, the Piazza del Popolo. It was the street scenes with their architectural monuments that still managed to arouse Ury's interest in Rome. The painter did not focus on the reproduction of the individual building as such, he subordinated it in favor of a view or perspective that aroused his artistic interest. (...) Lesser Ury refused to worship antiquity or sing the praises of past arts. The view of the Arch of Titus is not due to his admiration for it, it is rather the surrounding panorama, the vastness of the sky and the view to the next hill of Rome, what moved him. The high road in the present painting cannot be located in Rome. Lesser Ury directs the viewer's attention to the painting young woman with a bright red skirt and hat, sitting in the shade of the trees in front of an easel - and at the same time he directs his gaze in the distance to the villa shimmering brightly in the sunlight, to the depiction of which the young lady devotes herself. Lesser Ury painted a painter along a path that seems to end at the horizon in the bright blue sky." With an expert opinion by Dr. Sibylle Groß, Berlin, dated 2.11.2022. The painting will be included in the catalog raisonné of paintings, pastels, gouaches and watercolors by Lesser Ury, which is currently being prepared. Literature: Kindlers Malerei Lexikon, vol. 5, Zurich 1968, p. 605 (Landscape with Painter, 1890; Neumeister Collection, Munich); Seyppel, Joachim, Lesser Ury. The Painter of the Old City. Life - Art - Effect. Eine Monographie, Berlin 1987, p. 201, no. 100. Exhibition: Lesser Ury Gedenk-Ausstellung, Nationalgalerie, Berlin 1931, cat. no. 23; Lesser Ury zum 100. Geburtstag, Sonderausstellung, Galerie Paffrath, Düsseldorf 1961, cat. no. 8 (title: Landschaft mit Malerin); Lesser Ury, Ausstellung anläßlich des 100. Geburtstag, Bezirksamt Tiergarten, Berlin 1961, cat. no. 37 (title: Landschaft mit Malerin). Provenance: estate of the artist, verso on the canvas with the round estate label and the handwritten no. 117; inventory of the estate of Lesser Ury in the Zentralarchiv Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Preußischer Kulturbesitz, no. 117; Mirjam Behrendt, Stettin, by succession, June 1932; Galerie Neumeister, Munich, at the latest since 1961; private property, Southern Germany, acquired from the aforementioned in the early 1960s; private property, Southern Germany, by succession to the present owner. Taxation: Differentially taxed VAT: Margin Scheme