It was owned by the Viennese cabaret artist Fritz Grünbaum before he was murdered by Nazis and has been the object of high-profile disputes and court battles.

It is a variation of the repeated executed motif by the artist of a view of the Bohemian town of Český Krumlov, known in German as Krumau, as seen from the castle hill.

[2] The picture shows a group of houses, enclosed on three sides by a deep blue ring symbolizing the Vltava, so that the village seems isolated and like floating in an indefinable, abstract space.

Two different versions have been presented, one by the heirs to Fritz Grünbaum and his wife, both murdered by Nazis in the Holocaust, and other by the Leopold Museum, in its court defense.

[10] The painting was returned to the Leopold Collection in Vienna after the court ruled, however, that the exhibition at MoMA was protected by "immunity from seizure" by treaty.