He focused on Gauguin's Tahiti pictures which he compared to "magnificent dreams of a mystical tropical existence in colour and beauty, purity and bestiality", but it was not the unreal or mystical as such that particularly fascinated him, it was the formal qualities.
Giersing also had an eye for others in addition to Gauguin in those first hectic weeks in Paris. At the same time as visiting exhibitions, drawing from life, writing articles, visiting cafes and so on, he went to the Louvre almost every day. And it was a re- hanging there that inspired him to a new article entitled "Two Pictures in the Louvre". It is a classic modernist presentation of the nature of the art of painting by means of a comparison between two portraits, one by Rembrandt and one by Titian, which through their differences illustrated the fundamental questions which the modernist had to ask of the relationship between painter, means and motif: "So, for Rembrandt the model is the essential thing; the canvas, the picture's play of form within the frame is the inessential. For Titian the opposite applies. For him, the Picture's own organic life is essential; its symphony of colour and form, the appearance and individuality of the model the inessential."
The portrait revealed the fundamental motif problem of modernism, since a portrait cannot be a portrait if it does not in some sense resemble or relate to the person portrayed. For the modernist this dependence was a restraint on the actual artistic work, which ought not to have anything to do with what is usually understood by identification or empathy with a personality. So it was difficult for Giersing to take seriously portraying for the sake of portraying.
At the start of 1907 Gauguin was still the artist from whom Giersing had learnt most in Paris and who he believed would be the most significant benefit from the visit. The master had put his stamp on a large-scale self-portrait "in great whole tones", which he worked on at intervals over some months from November 1906 to February 1907. At first he thought it a failure, though later he considered it one of the best things he had painted. "... but do not expect any ordinary self-portrait," he wrote to the family. "What you will see will remind you partly of a demigod, partly of a semi-idiot". Meanwhile, even before completing the self-portrait he experienced so much that was new to him that the master's star faded considerably. Now it was Edouard Manet who suddenly became the yardstick according to which other artists must be measured. Nevertheless, Manet belonged to the past; the present was represented by Cézanne and also the neo-impressionist Paul Signac, who in February exhibited in the Bernheim-Jeune gallery.
Referring to Signac, Giersing could tell a friend that in Paris there were "people painting with dots". On the 20th March the Salon des Indépendants opened with no fewer than 5406 works. Giersing, however, was not confused when in his exhibition catalogue he made marks by the artists who interested him. The pages on which Matisse was represented have been lost, but among the 18 artists he marked were the Fauvists Derain, Othon-Friesz, Manguin, Marquet and Puy and also Braque who established contact with them in 1907. On the 29th March Giersing could tell his family that he himself had been "having a go at painting with dots". One of the pictures to which he referred was a portrait of the Norwegian composer Per Reidarson painted in radiant yellows, blues, reds and greens that are close to those in Signac's palette. But the manner of painting with the filled, emphatic lines is that of the Fauvists.
In order to acquire skill he spent countless afternoons at the private Académie Colarossi. Until this visit, his drawing style had been rather stiff, but he quickly mastered the rhythms of the lines and the linear characterisation of the female body. Meanwhile, the technical skills of the craftsman were not in themselves a result. The important thing was the language of painting. In this sense he had gained fresh knowledge about colour and form and not least the substance and meaning of the brush stroke, and this could not easily be united with the demands of drawing technique and the model, and not at all when he could not afford to pay a regular model.
The impressions and experiences from Paris were manifold, and he did not return home serene and complete; nor had he presumably expected to, and indeed these were qualities which he later came to fear. For if you were complete, you were finished as an artist. However, he had acquired so much of a foot-hold now that - to his own way of thinking, at least - he had become "Giersing", as he signed the portrait of Reidarson and the pictures he painted in Copenhagen in the summer of 1907.