A low range of distant mountains spans the full width just above center, its upper slopes and ridgelines struck by warm, raking light while the base stays in cool shadow. Below, a broad flat desert plain scattered with muted sage scrub fills the lower half; above, an empty, hazy sky fills the upper half with no clouds or sun disc in view. Almost no foreground detail interrupts the long view.

Depth comes from soft aerial haze and value contrast rather than linear perspective, with the strongest color concentrated on the sunlit peaks in terracotta, ochre and dusty mauve. The oil paint is laid on in confident loaded-brush and palette-knife strokes across the mountain and plain, and more thinly and smoothly in the sky, in the tradition of plein-air landscape painting.