As outlined in a 1997 article by Judith H. Dobrzynski in "The New York Times", the painting had been owned by Lea Bondi Jaray, a Jewish art dealer who was fleeing the German annexation of Austria and the Aryanization program, and had under duress given up the painting to art dealer Friedrich Welz in 1939. While Bondi's art gallery had already been "Aryanized" and all paintings seized, Welz had seen the painting in Bondi's apartment, where it was part of her private collection, and demanded that she turn it over to him. As they were to be fleeing the country any day, her husband convinced her to turn the painting over to Welz, saying "you know what he can do." Welz also forced Dr. Heinrich Rieger to sell his collection of Schiele paintings before Rieger was deported to the Theresienstadt concentration camp, where he was murdered on October 21, 1942.