clare-obscure

While beyond the idea of comprehensive motion the colossal symmetry of Truth expands in ultimate outlines, her features are shrouded, but in such an attractive clare-obscure of inviting analogies and semi-satisfying glimpses, that the temptation to guess at the ideal face almost overpowers the desire to kiss the real and shining feet below.

The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 Devoted to Literature and National Policy Various

Colannah nodded acquiescence, the stately feathers on his head gleaming fitfully in the clare-obscure of the cavern.

The Frontiersmen Mary Noailles Murfree 1886

His eyes were caught first by the aspect of a youthful mother with a golden-haired babe on her breast; close by showed the head and horns of a cow; the mule was mercifully sheltered too, and stood near, munching his fodder; a cluster of sheep pressed after the steps of half a dozen men, that somehow in the clare-obscure reminded him of the shepherds of old summoned by good tidings of great joy.

The Christmas Miracle 1911 Mary Noailles Murfree 1886

A half-page display ad. with wood-cut portrait of a chamber-set occupying the foreground and the clare-obscure worked up with various sizes and styles of black type, possesses far more charm for him than does the deep blue of our Southern sky, whose mighty concave seems to reach to Infinity's uttermost verge; a two-story brick livery stable or laundry is to him far more interesting than the splendors of the Day-god rising from the ocean's blue; an eighty-cent dollar with its lying legend more beautiful in his eyes than even Austin's violet crown bathed in the radiance of the morning or arched with twilight's dome of fretted gold.

The Complete Works of Brann the Iconoclast, Volume 1. 1898