Géza Radó was born in Hungary. Both he and his wife Pauline, née Blau, were Jewish and lived at the latest from 1902 in Vienna. In 1910 he became co-proprietor of Radó & Zeisler and in 1915 sole proprietor of the company. It was located at Rotenturmstraße 6 in Vienna's 1st district and dealt in gold, silver and China silverware, modern bronzes, leather, fancy goods and jewellery. Because of economic difficulties Radó was obliged to wind up the company in August 1937.

Radó was a Czech citizen and thus protected from some of the repression until the occupation of Czechoslovakia by the Nazi German Reich. In autumn 1939, however, he and his wife were obliged to give up their long-standing apartment at Rathausplatz 8 in the 1st district "because of the circumstances" as he put it. He was no doubt referring to the increased pressure by the Nazi regime since May 1939 to evict Jews from rented apartments with a view to keeping them apart from the non-Jewish population. Radó states that he had to sell much of his assets, albeit without going into detail, thus making it impossible to determine whether an art collection was meant. At the end of August 1939 he offered a triptych by an unknown artist showing military manoeuvres for sale to the Heeresmuseum in Vienna. He had been advised by someone hitherto to offer it to the museum before selling it privately. The museum director Alfred Mell purchased the picture from Radó for the proposed price of 200 Reichsmarks. Radó and his wife lived until December 1941 in a collective apartment at Zirkusgasse 27 in the 2nd district, where Radó died on 22 December 1941. Pauline Radó was deported on 20 June 1942 to Theresienstadt and on 23 September 1942 to Treblinka, where she was murdered under unknown circumstances. Their daughter Lily (also Lilly) had already died in 1932.

On the basis of a dossier from the Museum of Military History / Military History Institute, the Art Restitution Advisory Board recommended at its meeting on 5 October 2017 that the painting be returned to Radó's legal successors.