Millet's native Gruchy is a hamlet on the tip of a peninsula that juts into the English channel along the Normandy coast of northern France in La Hague district. It is close to the coast and to the many dune-protected beaches. This view of cliffs behind a rolling landscape with a path ascending from a lower elevation has been associated with the area near Gruchy, which the artist frequently visited. Similar sites depicted by Millet, with cliffs and rolling hills, were near Vichy, in central France, where he and his wife summered from 1866 until 1868.