Sunday, July 12, 2009

California Missions

San Francisco's Mission Dolores as it looked in 1870. The painter Edwin Deakin represented all twenty-one of the California Missions in an 1899 book published in Berkeley. Among the twenty-one were three Missions that had become "extinct" before Mr. Deakin began his work: Missions at San Rafael, Santa Clara and Santa Cruz. "Extinct" was Mr. Deakin's genteel word for "obliterated." He painted those three based on images surviving from earlier days.



An engraved calling card from Miss Estrada is pasted into the front of the copy owned by the San Francisco library where I work. She writes, "A loving souvenir of Mrs. Urquhart's history class, with best-wishes of a grateful listner."