Ernst exhibited some of his early paintings with the Expressionist group. This painting shows the influence of Expressionism in the self-consciously naïve style and use of heightened colour. The disembodied, moustached man raises his bowler hat, only to reveal another underneath (the mark of the true bourgeois gentleman). A bird can be seen falling out of the tree at the bottom of the picture. Birds often appear in Ernst's work and were of significance to him because as a child his pet bird died on the same day his sister was born.