This painting depicts a poor family of day laborers in the Thuringian region of central Germany. The artist, Otto Edmund Günther (1838–84), studied at the Düsseldorf Academy of Art from 1858 to 1861 and at the School of Art in Weimar from 1863 to 1866. After executing many drawings of the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–71, Günther began to shift his attention to scenes of ordinary Germans and the everyday hardships they faced. From 1876 to 1880, he held a professorial post at the Academy of Art in Königsberg. After his tenure there, he returned to Weimar, where he remained until his death.