Le père Magloire allongé dans un bois

This 1884 companion piece from the Etretat visit shows the same figure, le pere Magloire, lying down at rest in a woodland setting — a subject of unusual informality and directness. The reclining figure in a natural setting had precedents in Corot and Barbizon painters, and in Manet's Le Dejeuner sur l'herbe, but Caillebotte's treatment is neither romantic nor provocative — simply a record of a man resting outdoors. The pair of Pere Magloire paintings represents a brief excursion into naturalist genre painting unusual in Caillebotte's predominantly urban and leisure-boating oeuvre.

The reclining figure is seen from a slightly elevated viewpoint, the body foreshortened and the surrounding woodland rendered in dappled greens. Caillebotte uses a more relaxed brushwork than his urban paintings. The woodland light filtering through the canopy creates a patchwork of warm and cool tones around the resting figure.