Hugo Arnot, owner of several art dealerships in Vienna until 1938, was one of three sons of Markus (Max) Abeles, born in 1844, and his wife Franziska, née Goldberger (1852-1920), who both came from Bohemia. In 1873, the company M. F. Abeles & Comp., with its registered office located at Mittelgasse 2 in Vienna’s 6th district,  was registered with the commercial court. The general partners were Markus Abeles and Adolf Weißkopf, who traded in oil paintings, mirrors and clocks and produced gilded products. From 1879, Abeles was the sole owner of the company, which he had meanwhile relocated to Millergasse 42-44, also in Vienna’s 6th district. In 1885, Markus Abeles’ brother Philipp joined the company as an open partner, and from 1902 two of Markus’ sons, Hugo Abeles and the chemist Robert Arnot, were joint authorised signatories. The company was export-orientated and also commissioned Viennese painters to produce a large number of oil paintings for foreign customers. In 1906, Hugo Abeles, who had changed his name to Arnot the previous year, became a partner. Markus Abeles died in 1908. Hugo Arnot, sole proprietor of M. F. Abeles from 1909, founded a further trade in pictures, mirrors and picture frames in 1916 in the building of the Hotel Bristol at Kärtnerstraße 53/55 in Vienna’s 1st district,. Together with the frame manufacturer Paul Feigl, he was also an open partner in the company Arnot & Feigl at Millergasse 42-44, which had existed since 1921 and produced frames, mouldings and gilded goods. From 1909 onwards, Robert Arnot used this address to sell mechanically and chemically reproduced pictures. Born in 1876, Guido Arnot, another brother of Hugo Arnot, had studied painting and art history in Florence and Paris and had been a court-certified expert in ancient and modern art since 1917. In 1909, he founded a gallery, which mainly exhibited works by contemporary English and French artists, on the first floor of the building located at Kärntnerring 1 in Vienna’s 1st district. Egon Schiele created the oil painting Portrait of the Art Dealer Guido Arnot in 1918. Guido Arnot moved to London around 1928 and acquired British citizenship in 1934. Hugo Arnot's first marriage to Malwine, née Kohn (1884-1908), produced two sons, Herbert (1907-1990) and Ewald (1908-1990).

After the annexation of Austria to the National Socialist German Reich in March 1938, the Central Office for the Protection of Monuments received numerous export applications under the name Hugo Arnot or M. F. Abeles & Comp. In July 1938, Arnot submitted an application to the Property Transaction Office (VVSt) to sell his company for RM 35,000. In August, the painter Walter Russell, who had been appointed provisional administrator by the VVSt, concluded a verbal agreement with Karl Moser-Moosburg, according to which the latter was to take over the warehouse and inventory in its entirety. At the end of September, the VVSt issued the final licence and set the purchase price at approximately RM 9,300. After Moser-Moosburg died in an aeroplane accident in Yugoslavia in October 1940, his sister and heiress Karoline Fleck continued to run the company. The Hugo Arnot Company was officially dissolved in October 1940 and entered in the commercial register in 1943 under the new name Galerie Carl Moser with Karoline Fleck named as the owner. The company M. F. Abeles & Comp. was dissolved in August 1941.

In 1945, the US military authorities seized the business and in May 1946 appointed Elfriede Klimbacher, whom Fleck had appointed as managing director, as public administrator. According to a partial decision by the Restitution Commission at the Regional Court for Civil Matters in Vienna in June 1948, the company was restituted to the heirs of Hugo Arnot, Herbert and Ewald Arnot in New York, and Wilfred Arnotin London, who liquidated it at the end of the same year. According to a court settlement of July 1949, however, they had to pay Fleck 12,500 schillings and hand over a painting to them. As early as 1948, the Regional Court for Criminal Matters in Vienna had initiated a People's Court proceeding against the deceased Karl Moser-Moosburg and his estate on the basis of Section 6 of the War Crimes Act ("abusive enrichment") for the purpose of a possible forfeiture of assets. In an expert appraisal, the accountant Artur Erwin Kotschy came to the conclusion that only just under RM 7,000 of the purchase price had been paid out4 and that no payment at all had been made for the company's most valuable asset, the business premises in the extremely favourable location opposite the State Opera House. Nevertheless, the public prosecutor's office discontinued the proceedings in 1950 in accordance with Section 90 of the Code of Criminal Procedure.

Hugo Arnot had fled to London in June 1939 and died there in 1940, Guido Arnot also died in London, in 1946. In the same year, Herbert Arnot founded the Arnot Gallery in New York, which the following generations continued to run until the 2000s.