One of the first descriptions of this sculpture was made by Georges Limbour, after seeing it on a visit to the artist’s atelier: “As we were leaving, Germaine Richier […] had the urge to show us an object about one and a half metres tall, wrapped in damp cloths. She unwrapped it, for here the wrappings serve a different purpose from that employed by the Egyptians: rather than enveloping the bodies after death, they protect them before they are fully born. So it was an incomplete work: a forest-man, made from a carefully chosen tree branch, clay, wire, and I think there was moss too, yes, at least on the branch. These different natural elements were doubtless temporary, the fruit of sudden inspiration, gathered together as they were with the impulse of inspiration and set to be erased later on by plaster.”

A year later, in 1948, Limbour had the opportunity to see the bronze version of the sculpture, at the Germaine Richier exhibition at Galerie Maeght: “[…] (H)ere is a forest-man, in bronze. From its forms, one can make out that this figure […] was originally composed of a variety of disparate substances, such as earth and plant matter. For instance, the right arm is clearly the cast of a gnarled tree branch that brought to mind an arm and shoulder. The process involved recalls that of collage in painting, with the difference that here the object has been transmuted, changing in nature from wood to bronze, and thereby becoming fully integrated with the whole […]”