This painting depicts a seated or recumbent male figure. As with most of Chaïm Soutine’s figure paintings, the identity of the sitter was not recorded. His ambiguous state lies somewhere between fatigue and deep sleep. His body fills the tableau, the lower edge of the picture plane crops his legs below the knee, and the elevated perspective situates the viewer in an uncomfortably domineering position above the figure. An uneasy sense of animation is produced by plotting the figure as a straight, diagonal line across the picture plane; the figure is at once attentive, seemingly upright, even as he is evidently in a state of repose. His mouth is a focal point of the composition, a lurid, gash-like streak of vermilion paint, and this area corresponds with an area of the same colour in the background behind the figure.

The execution of the painting is characteristic of the intuitive, recklessly inventive manner that Soutine developed whilst living in Céret, near the Pyrenees, in 1919–22. The paint was applied wet-on-wet, most likely in the presence of a life model, in wild chromatic developments. The palette juxtaposes areas of red and green, and the flesh tones of the face freely borrow from the sickly green and khaki hues of the man’s clothes. The characterisation of the figure and the abandoned style of execution invest this painting with a fevered pitch of psychological intensity. The figure style of this work is naturalistic in contrast to Soutine’s later manner, developed in the mid-twenties, in which he distorted and exaggerated the shape and proportions of the body.

Jeune Homme Obliquement Étendu, known in English by the title ‘Man Reclining in Chair’, was first acquired directly from the artist by Dr Albert C. Barnes. Its ownership by Dr Barnes is recorded in the Barnes Foundation Archive under the reference number B.F. #501. The reason for its disposal is not recorded but Violette de Mazia, Dr Barnes’s assistant and subsequently Director of the Barnes Foundation, has described how the painting was ‘a favorite [sic] of Dr Barnes and he truly regretted having parted with it.’ Dr Barnes discovered Soutine in 1923 and transformed his fortunes by acquiring significant numbers of his paintings; the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia today possesses one of the largest collections of Soutine’s work. It was acquired from Dr Barnes by Kurt Mettler, a Swiss art dealer who owned a gallery in Paris. Mettler acquired various other paintings by Soutine from Dr Barnes besides Jeune Homme Obliquement Étendu, including Les Glaïeuls (c. 1919).