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The picture is one of Nemes Lamperth's major works. The picture which shows the artist's father on the catafalque has a message other than personal mourning. Although it is the portrait of a dead person, the artist is characterizing the living father. The solid mass of the face, especially that of the angular forehead, indicates will power and authority. The deep corners of the eyes and the strictness of forms surrounding him have a special meaning full of tension: the son mourning his father is mourning himself, too, in his dead father. The depressing memory of the father's aggressivity and the son's love of his father are present simultaneously. Ernő Kállay writes the following, "The portrayal produces the same shock and has the same condensated power as Béla Bartók's mourning songs composed at about this time."
The picture has no direct predecessor, but the composition recalls baroque pictures of the same subject matter, or details of altar pieces which show Christ appearing at Easter or lying in the grave, or similar pictures of Spanish realist artists or Velazquez and Greco. The picture can be linked to Gulácsy's "Catafalque" (1912): although the dead person cannot be seen, the ceremony appears to be as solemn as here.
Nemes Lamprth's pictures were followed by Derkovits' composition which depicted his brothers and sisters and finally himself on the catafalque.
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