 Though the receding cliff suggests the artist's familiarity with one-point perspective, the rest of the view is distorted to suggest the vastness of the scene.The artist creates a surreal image by juxtaposing the lone, brooding foreground figure with tiny silhouettes in the distance.Though solitary figures are common in the contemporary luminist paintings of the Hudson River school (to which the artist was likely exposed), the artist's approach to the subject is markedly different.