Lesser Ury (1861–1931) was born Leo Lesser Ury on 7 November 1861 in Birnbaum, in the Prussian province of Posen (now Międzychód, Poland), the son of a Jewish baker. After his father’s death in 1872 the family moved to Berlin. In 1879 Ury entered the Kunstakademie in Düsseldorf, and he continued his studies in Brussels, Paris, where he worked with Jules-Joseph Lefebvre, and Munich, before returning to Berlin in 1887.
Ury became one of the great painters of Berlin city life. He painted the Tiergarten, Unter den Linden, rainy streets, cafés and elevated railway stations, often at twilight or at night, in a freely brushed Impressionist manner, and he excelled in pastel as well as oil. He also painted landscapes in Germany, Italy and Holland. A reserved man, distrustful of others, he became increasingly reclusive in his later years.
Ury died in his Berlin studio on 18 October 1931, three weeks before his seventieth birthday, and is buried in the Jewish cemetery at Weißensee in Berlin.