Likewise, Emil Nolde deliberately does not call his painting "Three Figures", "Women", "In Conversation" or "Encounter", but "Homage". The mere observation of the figures will therefore not provide any information about who could be depicted. Nor is it the artist's goal to narratively reproduce an easily readable situation. Rather, the title "Homage" leads the viewer down a certain overarching path, and various interpretations seem possible. The word means: to be reverent or loyal to someone or something. The offered homage can be basically to a god, a lord (king), but also to a fellow human being. Dr. Christian Ring points out that the work could pay homage to Ada - Nolde's first wife - who had died in 1946, a year before the painting was created. This seems plausible, although the painting is very explicitly based on a watercolor from the period of the "Unpainted Pictures", which was already painted in the early 1940s. The motif probably existed long before Ada's death. However, the decision to transfer this motif from the small-format watercolor to the large canvas will not have been made independently of her death. Whatever scene or figures Emil Nolde chose to depict, the painter did not seek to reproduce natural events, but to create something with the power of art. Nolde never gave up his belief in the possibility of letting something essential shine through painting. Like so many expressionist painters, he tried to reproduce his feelings, his passion, his soul in art without the help of reason or any knowledge.