Medardo Rosso, who from his youth had…

Medardo Rosso, who from his youth had rejected the strictures of academic art; is in 1884 expelled from the Brera Academy for his rebellious influence on fellow students.

Like his Impressionist contemporaries, he seeks to capture in his work the immediate, elusive sensations of light and movement.

Rosso's social consciousness is evident in such portrayals of the mundane as Impression of an Omnibus (1883-84; destroyed).

In 1884, some friends arrange an exhibition for him in Paris, where he lives for a time in a cheap boarding house.

He also shows this year in Paris at the newly founded Salon des Indépendants.

He meets Degas and calls on Rodin, who is interested in (and indeed not uninfluenced by) him.

The sculptor and teacher Jules Dalou allows him to work in his Paris studio.

Dalou, forty-six, is noted for allegorical group compositions of Baroque inspiration and for simpler studies of common people, representative of the naturalist trend in French sculpture.