The paintings are considered masterpieces of German impressionism, heavily influenced by the style of French impressionist painters Édouard Manet and Edgar Degas.

One of the paintings in the 1930s belonged to the collection of Jewish factory owner and art collector David Friedmann in Wrocław, then Breslau, Silesia.

It was seized by the Nazi authorities shortly after the anti-Jewish Kristallnacht pogrom in 1938 and in 1942, one of Hitler's official art dealers, Hildebrand Gurlitt, acquired Two Riders on the Beach from "Aryan" auctionneer Hans W.

Somehow he had made Edwin Rae, the chief of the Monument's, Fine Arts and Archives section in Munich, believe that four of his paintings in fact belonged to his cousin Brigitta.In 2012, in an event that made headlines around the world, Hildebrand Gurlitt' son, Cornelius Gurlitt, was discovered to have a secret stash of paintings.

"David Toren remembers staring at Max Liebermann’s Two Riders on a Beach as his great-uncle signed over his estate to a Nazi general.