'fin Arts.
SIBERIAN AND TARTARIC VIEWS.
A considerable series of water-colour paintings—absolutely unique, we believe—is now to be seen at Messrs. Colnaghi's. These are views taken by Mr. T. W. Atkinson in Siberia, Mongolia, Daouria, and Chinese Tar- tary, under special permission and safe conduct of the late Emperor of Russia, during a prolonged journey of seven years, from which the artist has just returned to England. The expedition is among the curiosities of artistic adventure. Over vast steppes, amid strange desolateness of rock, river, and waterfall, in a country so void of habitation that an en- tire summer was passed without having met a single human being, the painter travelled with his wife, living as he could, and faring chiefly on the spoils of the chase acquiiedby his own right hand. The designs bring us acquainted with scenes hitherto wholly unknown to European art, and marked by characteristics strikingly peculiar and distinctive. Great piers and columns of rock, chafed by sea and torrent, and carved into forms fantastic yet strangely exact withal—the dark dun basalt, the deep red glow of porphyry, the yellow jasper; blocks of lava traced back some days' journey to the crater of an extinct volcano; the red verdure-
tufted stretch of. steppes ; the briny shallows of seat edged with crimson vegetation • the orange depth of clear sunset sky ; the spreading cedar, and the willow hollowed out into a skeleton; the Chinese piquet, or ru- ral temple, and the sheep sacrificed in Tartar rites, and raised against a primitive scaffolding; the canoe sent by Government 500 versts down the stream for the travellers' accommodation,—these are features, indi- vidual or generic, recovered for civilized eyes in this interesting series from the furthest limits of the gigantic Russian empire, and from regions still more remote and barbaric. From the designs taken and often fully painted on the spot, Mr. Atkinson has also in various instances executed water-colour pictures on an unusually large scale. The style is plain, clear, and exact; not distinguished by delicacy or elaborated complete- ness of manner, but with an air of faithfulness and honest unimpatient work, and often with a correct and intelligible indication of luminous effect.
We understand that some examples of the series are already in the hands of Messrs. Day for publication in lithography.
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