Under the influence of the romantic school, as I have already said, Fromentin’s brush sought at first chiefly to dazzle. But one day he awoke to a comprehension of Corot. The inward emotion which he underwent affected him like the discovery of a new light. A transformation followed rapidly, not in his ability to feel, but in his fashion of reproducing what he felt. Yielding joyfully to the authority of Corot, he began to make use of gray, and before long it became his dominant tone. Like a frail cloud interspersed with invisible rays of red and azure, enveloping the atmosphere of his scenes and characters, and blending into his minutely wrought skies, this gray of his, which borrowed something of its hue from each of the primary colours, pleased him by the very discreetness of its opulence. Discreetness is one of the hallmarks of refinement; and Fromentin was nothing, if not refined, in his manners, his thoughts, and his speech. “Just as his painting was never heavy and his writing never dull,” says Emile Montégut, “his physical build was slender, graceful, delicate; yet his slenderness was in no way weakness, nor his delicacy affectation. No objectionable professional mannerism proclaimed the craft he practised; still less did he ape the manners of the man of fashion, in order to hide the fact that he was a man of toil. With all his frankness, he had the good taste to refrain from betraying his intimate personality to the world at large.” It was precisely this use which he made of gray that enabled him, by its play of half-tones, to explore the mystery of souls. And quite unconsciously he revealed his own, a noble soul, enamoured of all that is great and eternal in civilization and in life. When face to face with an actual scene, he frequently gave up the attempt to transfer it with his brush. It was not until much later, after long reflection over the material conditions of a scene whose beauty had delighted his eye, that he was ready to begin work.