Stylistically Gleizes' painting exemplifies the principle of mobile perspective laid out in Du "Cubisme", written by himself and French painter Jean Metzinger.

[2] Man in a Hammock is an oil painting on canvas with dimensions 130 by 155.5 cm (51.2 x 61.2 inches) signed and dated "Alb Gleizes 13", lower left.

Painted in 1913, the work "presents an interesting synthesis of back and forth motion," writes art historian Daniel Robbins (Guggenheim, 1964), "and introduces a composition based on the intersection of powerful diagonals".

In both the proto-Cubist version and in a small oil sketch (formerly in the collection of Ida Bienert, Dresden) the man wears a large sombrero.

[9][10][11][12] Gleizes utilizes a multitude of colors—unlike the limited palette often associated with early Cubism—ranging from large areas of ochre, red, white and blue, surrounding the grisaille figure.

Mercereau's book, the still-life next to the sitter, the man, and the environment are all symbols of fundamental importance to Gleizes, an artist who rarely, if ever, contented himself with mundane subjects (a guitar, violin, or a bowl of fruit).

[17] Man in a Hammock is testament to the close association of two artists, Metzinger and Gleizes, and to their shared social, cultural and philosophical conviction that painting represented more than a fleeting glimpse of the world in which they lived, that indeed by showing multiple facets of a subject captured at successive intervals in time simultaneously, a truer more complete image would emerge.