Painters of the school of the Great Hungarian Plain never had a school like those of Szolnok or Nagybánya. János Tornyai and József Koszta retired to their farms where they worked hard on their own to find the best way of expression. The style which resulted in the early 20th century was a particularly Hungarian one which could not be mistaken with any other: it was, in fact, a highly expressive variant of realism.

Koszta, who initially kept in touch with the schools of Szolnok and Nagybánya, painted plein-air pictures under the influence of Károly Ferenczy in 1902 (On the Hill, 1902) which united traditions as represented by Pál Szinyei Merse and Mihály Munkácsy. In his later pictures, full of contrasts, tense rhythm and very much down-to-earth, he carried on with the style of Munkácsy (Before the Thunderstorm, 1909).

The art of János Tornyai showing life in the country relied on Munkácsy's style: Tornyai even asked for the master's advice in Paris. Tornyai painted motifs of the endless plain under the vast sky with the taciturn resoluteness of Hungarian peasants. His pictures are utterly simple constats of a desolute landscape, of hopelessness and poverty (Farm on the Great Hungarian Plain, 1910s).