View into a Valley

View into a Valley of 1890 represents a less-known aspect of Ury's work: the painted landscape, executed in this case on cardboard, a support often used for quick studies and sketches. In 1890 Ury was in his early thirties and still developing the urban subject matter for which he became celebrated. Landscape studies formed part of the artist's training and practice even for painters primarily focused on the city, offering technical exercises in rendering atmospheric depth, light gradation, and the color of the natural world. Ury had spent time in Scotland in the 1880s, and landscape experience there had fed into his sensitivity to atmospheric conditions. A valley view presents the challenge of depicting recession into depth through aerial perspective — the bleaching and cooling of colors as they recede — and Ury's approach to this formal problem would have informed his rendering of the long perspectival recessions in his Berlin street scenes.

Cardboard as a support absorbs paint differently from canvas, creating a matt, dry surface often used for preliminary studies. The atmospheric recession of the valley is rendered through tonal gradation from warm foreground to cool, hazy distance.