Liegender Akt

Liegender Akt (Reclining Nude) of 1889, in the Berlinische Galerie, shows Ury working within the academic tradition of the reclining female nude while investing it with his Impressionist-influenced light sensitivity. The nude was a central subject of nineteenth-century academic painting, and any ambitious painter had to engage with the tradition. Ury, despite his primary reputation as a painter of urban scenes, worked across a range of subjects including portraiture and the nude. The same year he painted the Berliner Straßenszene, he also produced this nude study, suggesting a painter working simultaneously in multiple modes. The Berlinische Galerie holds both works, offering a dual perspective on Ury's practice. The reclining format — the most conventional of nude poses — allowed him to focus on the play of light across a figure disposed horizontally, a problem with formal parallels to the horizontal water surfaces in his landscape and urban work.

The nude figure is rendered with attention to the fall of light across bodily surfaces, creating warm highlights and cooler shadows with Impressionist looseness rather than academic smoothness. Paint handling prioritizes the visual impression of light on skin over precise anatomical description.