It was the custom of Vernet to rise with the lark, and he often walked
forth before dawn and spent the whole day in wandering about the
surrounding country, to study the ever changing face of nature. He
watched the various hues presented by the horizon at different hours of
the day. He soon found that with all his powers of observation and
pencil, great and impassioned as they were, he could not keep pace with
the rapidly changing and evanescent hues of the morning and evening sky.
He began to despair of ever being able to represent on canvass the
moving harmony of those pictures which nature required so little time to
execute in such perfection, and which so quickly passed away. At length,
after long contemplating how he could best succeed in catching and
transferring these furtive tints to his canvass, bethought himself of a
contrivance which he called his Alphabet of tones, and which is
described by Renou in his "Art de Peindre."
The various characters of this alphabet are joined together, and
correspond to an equal number of different tints; if Vernet saw the sun
rise silvery and fresh, or set in the colors of crimson; or if he saw a
storm approaching or disappearing, he opened his table and set down the
gradations of the tones he admired, as quickly as he could write ten or
twelve letters on a piece of paper. After having thus noted down in
short hand, the beauties of the sky and the accidental effects of
nature, he returned to his studio, and endeavored to make stationary on
canvass the moving picture he had just been contemplating. Effects which
had long disappeared were thus recomposed in all their charming harmony
to delight the eye of every lover of painting.