Bracht Mountainscape

Here’s a dramatic landscape called "The Shores of Oblivion" by Eugene Bracht (1842-1921). The lighting makes the shot here, but what’s especially noteworthy is what he did with the chiaroscuro. 

 

The obvious approach would have been to set the illuminated tops against a dark sky, and to place a lighter sky behind the shadowed bases, using counterchange.

Instead he did the opposite, placing light-against-light and dark-against-dark. One might think this would make the scene confusing or harder to read. But what it does is lend “bigness” to the picture, and draw attention to the shadow edge. And somehow it lends a sense of mysterious, foreboding gloom to the distant, dark reaches of space near the horizon.