First owned by Picasso's friend Frank Burty Haviland , it was sold in 1912 to Alice and Paul Friedrich Leffmann, originally of Cologne, Germany. Its first public display was at the Sonderbund exhibition in May 1912 in Cologne. In 1933, with Adolf Hitler's rise to power the conditions for Jews in Germany worsened. The Leffmanns, a German Jewish couple, suffered the Aryanization of their home and businesses by the Nazis. The couple fled Germany in 1937 to Italy, and in 1938 to Switzerland and then to Brazil. The Leffmanns sold the painting in June 1938, for $13,200, to art dealers Paul Rosenberg and Hugo Perls, to fund their escape from the Nazis.
