A member of the “New Objectivity” movement which rejected abstraction and expressiveness, in the spring of 1927 – following the birth of his son Ursus – Otto Dix began painting a series of family portraits. The works are indebted to both the painting technique of the Old Masters and the tradition of the Holy Family as an artistic motif. The meditative mood evoked by the idyllic family scene is disrupted, however, by the distorted and exaggerated physiognomies. The depiction of the symbolically charged carnation being held out to the viewer by Dix’s daughter Nelly further emphasises his recourse to the Old Masters.