Mission Santa Barbara

Edwin Deakin was born and raised in England where he developed a keen interest in unusual architecture during the Romantic Movement. "Romantic writers and painters were attracted to the unusual and the unique subject they deemed beautiful, sublime, or picturesque. Ruins, for example, were considered picturesque." (Nancy Moure, California Art - 450 Years of Painting and Sculpture, Glendale, California, 1998) Deakin came to the United States in 1858, where he first settled in Chicago and developed a career as a portrait artist. In 1870, he moved to San Francisco and then traveled throughout the state sketching and painting the historic missions. In 1875, he painted both Mission Santa Barbara and Mission Buenaventura (lot 141) which are the earliest works in his mission series. He was well respected for his careful rendering of the architectural surfaces and created an important series of paintings of all 21 missions of California.