Greenough's connections and travels with Romantics of the period led to him realizing that artistic representations of physical features were imbued with emotional responses and representation which did not mix well with accuracy. On a trip through Switzerland in 1802 he noted that Mont Blanc is very difficult to reproduce artistically. He wrote: "A list of facts drawn up by a simple cold-blooded mathematician who has travelled through the country with his quadrant in his hand! may be better than a painter's sketch." Nevertheless, the influence of the Romantic poets is evident in his travels as his notebooks show how Greenough also found pleasure in allowing imagination and emotion to colour his response to grand landscapes.