Wood decided to paint the house along with, in his words, "the kind of people fancied should live in that house". He recruited his sister, Nan (1899–1990), to be the model for the daughter, dressing her in a colonial print apron mimicking 20th-century rural Americana. The model for the father was the Wood family's dentist, Dr. Byron McKeeby (1867–1950) from Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Nan told people that her brother had envisioned the pair as father and daughter, not husband and wife, which Wood himself confirmed in his letter to a Mrs. Nellie Sudduth in 1941: "The prim lady with him is his grown-up daughter."