Josef Urbach was a young artist when patrons of the art Scene in Essen, the Jewish families Simon, Levy, Abel and Stern, facilitated a study trip to Italy for him for several months in 1921. The paintings created on this trip were passed on the families' art collections. But when the Nazis came to power, everything changed drastically. In 1937 they declared two of his works as degenerate art and removed them from the Museum Folkwang. Little by little, Urbach lost his patrons, his paintings in Jewish collections were destroyed during the Reichskristallnacht or later confiscated and stolen.