Josef Pick (1842-1896) was the owner of a rummage shop at Landesgerichtsstraße 20 in Vienna’s 1st district, which his widow, Katharina Pick, née Berger (1848-1906), continued to run after his death and had registered with the commercial court in 1899. Her son Ignatz Pick, born in 1870, was an authorised signatory. After his mother left the company in 1902, as the new sole proprietor he had the company name changed to Ign. Pick. In 1914, the authorisation to trade in antiques was added to the trade in second-hand goods and soon works by renowned artists of the 19th and early 20th centuries were also on offer.

After the annexation of Austria to the National Socialist German Reich, Pick valued his business assets at approximately RM 57,500 in his property declaration. At the end of November 1938, the Property Transaction Office (VVSt) appointed Robert Grehs as provisional administrator at the suggestion of the Vienna Regional Director of the Reich Chamber of Fine Arts, Leopold Blauensteiner, and his deputy and managing director, Marcel Kammerer. The latter was to carry out an inventory and prepare the liquidation of the company ‘taking into account the artistically and culturally valuable goods’. Grehs valued the stock of goods at just under RM 35,700. A list he drew up comprised 1,100 individual items, including oil paintings, wooden sculptures, miniatures and furniture. Two works by artists from Upper Austria (a landscape by Adolf Obermüllner and a work by Johann Baptist Reiter, depicting the painter's daughter) were sold to the ‘Museum in Linz’ for 159 Reichsmarks, while two portraits by Johann Baptist von Lampi (depicting the former mayor of Vienna Anton Josef von Leeb and his wife) were sold at Grehs' suggestion to the Museum of the City of Vienna for well below the estimated value. The planned liquidation of the business by the liquidator Otto Faltis did not take place, as in early 1939 Hilda Attems and her cousin Maria Korb-Weidenheim (Maria Offermann after her marriage in 1939), who were sponsored by the Reichskammer, submitted an application to the VVSt for ‘Aryanisation’ for RM 24,000. In April 1940, the VVSt set a purchase price of RM 24,000 and an ‘aryanisation charge’ of approximately RM 5,500 Reichsmark; final approval was granted in August. Until then, Grehs had repeatedly sold off goods, however he used only part of the proceeds to pay outstanding discriminatory taxes for Pick, as demanded by the VVSt, while keeping a portion for himself. Due to the sales that had taken place, the VVSt ultimately reduced the purchase price to around RM 18,700. Grehs had also gradually sold some works of art, which had originally been excluded from the ‘Aryanisation’, to Offermann with Blauensteiner's permission. These included a drawing by Gustav Klimt, two oil paintings by Tina Blau (Prater and Dortrecht) and two oil paintings by Fritz Rojka (Interieur and Polnischer Jude). In May 1940, the Central Office for the Protection of Monuments received a final export application from Ignatz Pick with himself as the recipient and the destination USA; an oil painting by Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller, Alte Frau (Old Woman), was blocked for export. Ignatz Pick, who was unable to leave the country due to outstanding discriminatory taxes, died in the hospital of the Jewish Community on 25 February 1941. After the liberation of Vienna in April 1945, the Red Army briefly seized the shop, but in July, Amelie Menshengen, who had been working in the business since 1942 and had been appointed public administrator, was able to reopen it. In November 1948, Maria Offermann reached an out-of-court settlement with the heirs of Ignatz Pick living in the USA - Gisela Pick, Margaret Epstein and Alice Löwy - which concerned only the existing stock of goods, but not the business premises. Some of the items in the company were to be transported to the USA, while others were to be sold by Offermann on consignment. Offermann, on the other hand, was authorised to continue the business at the same location under the previous name Altkunstgalerie Wien. Offermann continued to run the business - from the 1960s at a new location on Annagasse in Vienna’s 1st district, - until 1977; she died in 1995, Hilda Attems, who had acted only as a silent partner, died in 1981.

The aforementioned portraits by Lampi were restituted by the Wien Museum to the legal successors of Ignatz Pick in 2008.