Rippl-Rónai captured the singular landscape of the South of France in colourful pictures. In 1901, he returned to Hungary; his intimate paintings depict his family and his immediate surroundings in subdued colours.
During the first decades of the new century he was influenced by international Neo-Impressionism and searched for modern possibilities of pictorial expression. From 1906 onwards, during his so-called "corn"-phase, he applied bright dabs of unmixed colours to his canvasses. In 1912, retrospective exhibitions of his work opened in Munich's Modern Gallery, in Frankfurt, and in Cologne. In 1914, he received a Gold Medal for his portrait of Maillol exhibited at the Vienna Künstlerhaus.