"I was trying to reproduce the 'Impressions of the boulevard': a woman's features seen in a fraction of a second, in a fleeting space, yet captured exactly as I saw them". It was with these words that Italian sculptor Medardo Rosso, answering a journalist, provided the key to interpreting this work, whose contours may initially be difficult for the observer to understand. This portrait of a woman in contemporary dress, her features blurred, seems to emerge from a block of wax. Her face is covered by a half-veil. The artist was trying to capture the movement, the moment.

These melting forms led several critics to define Rosso as an 'impressionist' sculptor, drawing a parallel with painting. His preferred material was wax, which he considered to be the best medium for the resonance he was seeking to convey, rather than the rigidity of stone. Rosso lived in Paris for many years and benefited from substantial support in France. This work was purchased by the French government on the initiative of Georges Clémenceau, then President of the Council of Ministers, who visited his workshop in 1907.