A watercolour by Vincent Van Gogh with a twisted provenance that includes two Jewish families and Nazi art collectors sold for $35.8 million at auction Thursday, a record for the artist’s work on paper.

Axar.az reports citing foreign media that in 1913, the painting was purchased by Max Meirowsky, a Jewish-German industrialist with a vast art collection-he sold the painting to fund his family’s escape from Germany in 1938 as persecution of Jews began to escalate.

By the time the Nazis invaded Paris in 1940, the painting was in the collection of Alexandrine de Rothschild, a member of the French branch of the wealthy Jewish banking family.