ith this desire to justify the flâneur trend as a means of attracting women in mind, we turn to the paintings. Le Déjeuner (1876) is an example of a painting of an isolated man clothed in plain black clothing separated from others. Here, oddly enough, the "urban stranger" in the foreground is Caillebotte's younger brother, René (Broude 33) and placed at the end of the table are Caillebotte's mother and butler. René wears an excessively black coat, simple in construction, with a flat lapel. The butler on the other hand, wears a frilly white shirt covered in a gold vest, finished by a tight dinner jacket and bowtie, clothing more characteristic of the feminized flâneur despite the butler's service position. What is strange about René's depiction in Le Déjeuner is how Caillebotte's chose to clothe him. Caillebotte painted René in simpler clothes than René would have normally worn for, of the Caillebotte children, René was the most extravagant in his lifestyle, especially in terms of clothing. Michael Marrinan notes in his essay "Caillebotte as Professional Painter," "at the time of his death, René had almost no personal possessions other than his wardrobe but he had accumulated nearly 60,000 francs in debts" (Broude 34). Painting René unrealistically suggests Caillebotte painted with the purpose of emphasizing the clothing difference between René and the butler rather than to simply depict reality. René's isolation also correlates with the inclusion of a woman into the scene, Caillebotte's mother, which first introduces the reasoning behind dressing as a flâneur, female attention.
owever, Caillebotte's mother does not fully demand a need for flâneur dress. Since the "urban stranger" and the woman in this case are related and are of obviously different age groups, attention of the romantic sense is not intended. In this way, Caillebotte creates only a half-motive, one that does not necessarily require maximum isolation. Indeed, we shall see that the social punishment in Le Déjeuner is not as intense as it can be because the person who represents the flâneur trend is still after all a servant. With his function caught explicitly in the painting as the butler bends over to serve Caillebotte's mother, there is still a commonality between the woman and René through their class. Thus Caillebotte creates a link between one of the social participants and the "urban stranger" to mitigate the isolation effect on the "urban stranger". The less intense social punishment in turn clarifies the primary motivation for dressing as a flâneur is not simply any kind of female attention but of romantic female attention. The choice of masculine clothing in front of eligible women would therefore be expected to invoke maximum isolation and social punishment from a painter whose wish was to explain the female motivation of the flâneur trend.