At the time of the Hague School, the French painter Courbet enjoyed a certain notoriety. He styled himself as a rebel and refused to align himself with any spe-cific style. Instead he began a one-man movement: ‘Realism’. He tried to render the ruggedness of nature by applying the paint to the canvas spontaneously, often with a palette knife. He painted these cliffs in the Jura Mountains in the vicinity of his native Ornans.