# Lesser Ury artist context and auction value notes

Canonical page: https://appraisily.com/artist/lesser-ury/
Profile generated: 2026-05-02T13:17:45.786Z
Quality: high confidence, strong sources

## Artist identity

- Birth date: 1861-11-07
- Death date: 1931-10-18
- Nationality: German
- Movements: Impressionism, Düsseldorf school of painting
- Common media: oil painting, pastel, printmaking

## About Lesser Ury

Lesser Ury (1861–1931) was a German Impressionist painter and printmaker celebrated for his atmospheric depictions of Berlin street scenes, cafés, and landscapes. Born in Birnbaum, Prussia (now Międzychód, Poland), Ury trained in Düsseldorf, Brussels, Paris, and Munich before settling in Berlin, where he established his mature practice. Associated early in his career with the Düsseldorf school of painting, he developed a personal Impressionist style distinguished by luminous color and sensitive rendering of light—particularly in urban nocturnes and interior scenes. Ury exhibited with the Berlin Secession and gained recognition for plein-air landscapes, floral still lifes, and evocative city views. While sometimes overshadowed by contemporaries in the Berlin Secession circle, his contribution to German Impressionism has been reassessed in recent decades. With over a thousand recorded lots at auction, Ury's work is a regular presence in the European art market.

## Common works and media

Common work types include oil paintings of Berlin street scenes and nocturnes, café and restaurant interiors, plein-air landscapes (particularly of the German countryside and Mediterranean views), floral still lifes, pastel drawings, and prints. Ury worked across oil, pastel, watercolor, and printmaking media. Recurring subjects include urban life in Berlin, seasonal landscapes, flower arrangements, and atmospheric interior scenes with figures.

## Market and appraisal context

Lesser Ury has a deep and active auction footprint, with 422 recorded lots spanning from 1992 to late 2025 and 271 lots with realized prices. His work trades regularly across major European and international houses—Christie's, Sotheby's, Grisebach, Bonhams, and Lempertz chief among them—as well as specialist German venues such as Karl & Faber, Hampel Fine Art Auctions, and Auktionshaus am Grunewald. Price dispersion is wide: the recorded minimum is €50 (typically prints or small works on paper) and the maximum is €674,500, with a median of €6,325 and an interquartile range of €800–€34,375. Liquidity is stable at 27 priced lots in each of the trailing and prior 12-month windows, indicating consistent market throughput rather than speculative spikes. Oil paintings of Berlin street scenes, nocturnes, and café interiors sit at the top of the price distribution, while pastels, prints, and smaller landscapes form the more accessible tier. The broad house roster and steady lot flow make Ury one of the more liquid German Impressionists in the secondary market.

## Auction-house-backed market evidence

Lesser Ury has a deep and active auction footprint, with 422 recorded lots spanning from 1992 to late 2025 and 271 lots with realized prices. His work trades regularly across major European and international houses—Christie's, Sotheby's, Grisebach, Bonhams, and Lempertz chief among them—as well as specialist German venues such as Karl & Faber, Hampel Fine Art Auctions, and Auktionshaus am Grunewald. Price dispersion is wide: the recorded minimum is €50 (typically prints or small works on paper) and the maximum is €674,500, with a median of €6,325 and an interquartile range of €800–€34,375. Liquidity is stable at 27 priced lots in each of the trailing and prior 12-month windows, indicating consistent market throughput rather than speculative spikes. Oil paintings of Berlin street scenes, nocturnes, and café interiors sit at the top of the price distribution, while pastels, prints, and smaller landscapes form the more accessible tier. The broad house roster and steady lot flow make Ury one of the more liquid German Impressionists in the secondary market.

### Appraisal notes

An appraisal of a Lesser Ury work would begin by matching the piece against the 422-lot auction record to identify medium-specific and subject-specific comparables. Appraisily uses the recorded price distribution—median €6,325, P25 €800, P75 €34,375—to bracket value based on medium (oil, pastel, print), subject matter (urban scene, landscape, still life), and dimensions. The appraiser would also consider photographs of the work, a condition report, provenance documentation, signature verification, and any edition details for prints. Comparable lots from the same house tier and recent vintage (the trailing 27 priced lots in the last 12 months) provide the most relevant market benchmarks. Attribution confirmation is important for unsigned works, as Ury's Impressionist style overlaps with contemporaries in the Berlin Secession circle.

### Valuation factors

- Medium: oil paintings command the highest prices, followed by pastels, then prints and works on paper. The P75 price of €34,375 is typically associated with oils.
- Subject: Berlin street scenes, nocturnes, and café interiors are the most sought-after subjects and anchor the upper price tier. Landscapes (Märkischer See, Tiergarten views) also perform well.
- Dimensions and scale: larger works generally achieve higher results; small-format oils and prints can fall below the median.
- Provenance: documented exhibition history or inclusion in a major collection strengthens value materially.
- Condition and signature: as with all works from this period, condition reports and confirmed signatures are essential to appraisal accuracy.
- House prestige: results at Christie's, Sotheby's, Grisebach, and Bonhams tend to set the benchmark for comparable valuations.
- Currency and geography: prices are quoted across EUR, USD, GBP, CHF, and ILS; currency conversion and regional demand should be factored into cross-market comparisons.

### Collector notes

- Lesser Ury's auction market is liquid and geographically diverse, with consistent throughput of roughly 27 priced lots per year across European and international houses.
- Entry-level collectors can find prints and small works on paper starting around €400–€800, while significant oil paintings of Berlin scenes regularly achieve €25,000–€70,000+ at major houses.
- Grisebach (Berlin) is the most frequent specialist venue for Ury and a good reference point for current German Impressionist pricing.
- Works appearing at top-tier houses (Christie's, Sotheby's, Bonhams) tend to be curated for quality and provenance; results there set the high-end benchmark.
- Pastel drawings offer a middle tier—more affordable than oils but with the characteristic light and atmosphere that define Ury's market appeal.
- When buying, verify attribution carefully for undocumented works; Ury's urban nocturnes and café scenes can resemble those of other Berlin Secession artists.

### Market caveats

- Price data covers 271 priced lots out of 422 total; approximately 36% of lots lack a realized price (withdrawn, unsold, or not yet reported), which can skew the lower end of the distribution.
- Auction results span multiple currencies (EUR, USD, GBP, CHF, ILS). Direct comparisons require currency normalization.
- The recorded maximum of €674,500 represents an outlier that may reflect a particular masterpiece with exceptional provenance; it should not be treated as typical.
- Attribution should be confirmed for unsigned or undocumented works, as Ury's style overlaps with other German Impressionists of the period.
- The existing artist profile noted that no auction-house-specific provenance or realized-price data was available at the time of original research; this addendum supplements that gap with Appraisily auction-record data.
- Recent lots from late 2025 may have null priceRealised values where results have not yet been reported or the auction had not concluded at data collection time.

### Market evidence sources

- undefined: https://appraisily.com/api/scraper-search/artists/lesser-ury/seo-profile?recentLimit=24&relatedLimit=0
- undefined: https://www.invaluable.com/auction-lot-lesser-ury-32-c-41c65f1d17
- undefined: https://www.invaluable.com/auction-lot-lesser-ury-original-hand-signed-and-numbered-etching-1924-german-impressionism-berlin-11826-c-7ac4db5a74

## Appraisily data basis

Appraisily artist pages combine artist identity research with auction records, auction-house context, sale dates, realized prices, and comparable lots when those records are available. Identity data for Lesser Ury is grounded in authority files from the Library of Congress, VIAF, Wikidata, and the RKD Netherlands Institute for Art History.

## Sources

- Library of Congress: https://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n83020086
- VIAF: https://viaf.org/viaf/25395586/
- Wikidata: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q512596
- Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lesser_Ury
- RKD: https://rkd.nl/en/explore/artists/78840
- Getty Vocabulary Program: https://vocab.getty.edu/page/ulan/500004839