[4] He is standing at a window from the family home in the Rue de Miromesnil in Paris, looking outwards into Boulevard Malesherbes (the large, oblique cross-street in the background).

"[4] By placing the onlooking man off-center and depicting him from a somewhat elevated viewpoint, Caillebotte's painting creates a tense relationship between the dominant foreground figure, the emphatic perspectival diagonals, and the detailed street scene beyond.

Varnedoe says "the normal interior-exterior oppositions of the window are thus combined in a charged relationship, competitive or covalent, that is seemingly unprecedented".

[7] Caillebotte presented this painting at the Impressionism exhibition of 1876 alongside a few of his other works, including Les raboteurs de parquet.

Writer Émile Zola was impressed with technical achievement of the works, but was not enthusiastic about the style: "Photography of reality which is not stamped with the original seal of the painter's talent—that's a pitiful thing."