Ink brush and pen drawing, pencil and opaque white on lightly textured plain paper 15.9/16.1 x 9.8/10.1 cm, framed under glass. Not signed, within the compositionon at lower sheet edge left of center with weak remnant of date 1903 (on the reflecting table surface). - On verso inscribed by an unknown hand "Lesser Ury/ Café Bauer" in pencil. - With minor old marginal tear lower right; on verso in corners with traces of old paper taping from former mounting.
"The drawing depicts a glance into the interior of the Café Bauer in Berlin in the year 1887, the year in which Lesser Ury finally returned to Berlin." (Sibylle Groß, in her expertise). In a later and larger drawing in charcoal (50 x 31.3 cm), Lesser Ury repeated and copied the motif so characteristic of his work.
Certificate
With an expertise and photo-certificate by Sibylle Groß, Berlin, dated 29 June 2006
Provenance
Eugen Walter Kaniak, Vienna (until 1891); since then in family possession; private possession, Austria
Literature
Martin Buber, Lesser Ury, in: Martin Buber (ed.), Jüdische Künstler, Berlin 1903, with ill. p. 52; B. Cecil Roth, Die Kunst der Juden, II vol., Frankfurt a.M. 1964, p. 47 with ill. 292; Joachim Seyppel, Lesser Ury, Der Maler der alten City, Leben, Kunst, Wirkung, Eine Monographie, Berlin 1987, nr. 67, p. 200