On the left, a group of people emerge from the side door of a church and spread out onto the street: they are mostly young girls who have made their first communion, dressed in white and holding missals and candles, symbols of the sacrament.

[6] In contrast, the girl standing in the foreground, intensely staring at the viewer and actively holding the candle away from her body, generates an effect of eerie stillness.

[7] Wearing mostly dark clothes, the adults create a play of chiaroscuro, thus emphasizing the contrast between youth and old age that is always repeated in Smith's paintings and finds its meanings in positivist culture and social analysis.

[3] All characters are well researched and depicted, as they say, with marked "atelier" realism, although there is no lack of atmospheric effects, here highlighted by the warm brightness of the background on the right where the buildings and sky fade into the distance.

[3] In 1880, at the age of 21, Carl Frithjof Smith, a Norwegian by birth, enrolled in the Munich Academy of Fine Arts with Ludwig von Löfftz among the principal instructors, a genre painter who certainly influenced him toward this type of painting.