During a lull in the fighting on the Western Front in 1917 La Fresnaye resumed drawing and painted small watercolors.

The drawings and watercolors actually done at
the front or behind it during the brief rest
periods are eloquent of the profound effect
this vast change in the artist's life had brought
about. Technically, the austerity of the previous
works has given way to rounder lines and gentler
forms, but this is only the outward evidence of a
deeper change--the breaking down of La Fresnaye's
Olympian aloofness. Heretofore, there has been
little evidence that he was greatly interested in
portraying human beings as individuals...Now the
small drawings and watercolor are unmistakably taken
direct from life about him, in a realistic style.
(G. Seligman, op. cit., p. 56)