“Painting for three weeks on oil-pictures for Academy Exhibition. First attempts in oil for exhibition. Trouble with medium. Final triumph of mind over matter. Painted a week or more on large autumn study commenced at Williamstown. Grew frantic and in a moment of frenzy took a piece of pasteboard and palette-knife and produced strongest picture I ever painted, in less than fifteen minutes,--a revelation which gave me confidence. A victorious fight with an oil-tube which had threatened to get the better of me.” A few days later he tried a similar study, with which he was even more satisfied. In another entry he says of this attempt: “Much pleased with effect of sky I carried picture to a finish by four o’clock. Went out and ordered frame for it. A Diaz effect,--quite strong. What a revelation to me who, ten days ago, was disgusted with oil-color as a medium! I am all aglow with enthusiasm at finding another medium for the expression of my thoughts and feelings.” From this time forward he knew that there were still greater possibilities before him than he had realized, and with the knowledge came a fresh ambition, a stronger challenge to his artistic nature. The “smoke-pictures” which he executed were one more example of his versatility and delight in new and daring methods. He did a great many of them, and they attracted much attention. They were, briefly, black-and-white pictures made by a gas flame upon a cardboard or paper ground. In his first experiments he held the paper before a horizontal flame and by passing one part after another across the flame, secured masses of lamp-black, which he found he could manipulate to great advantage. Landscape, cloud-effects, deep shadows of night or storm were easily within reach. Afterward he attached a rubber tube to his gas-fixture, and with a suitable nozzle was able to sit at his easel and manipulate the pipe as he would a brush. After the paper was well coated with varying shades of gray and black, he would work up the picture with brush or finger or palette-knife, deepening the tones, when desirable, by more smoke, lightening them by scraping and rubbing. The total effect was broad, yet marked by gradations so fine as to be almost beyond the reach of ordinary methods of black-and-white work; while the rich, velvety textures were of a depth quite remarkable. Though he never devised any method of “fixing” the smoke, yet after the lapse of a dozen years, these pictures, when preserved under glass, have kept all their original brilliancy and force.