This article examines a series of paintings of the California missions by British-US artist Edwin Deakin. Deakin’s work contributed to a popular narrative of California’s history that was based on colonial transformations of the natural landscape. This article argues that these transformations are paralleled by Deakin’s own intensive efforts to visually transform the land through the language of the picturesque. By bringing together diverse geographies and contested histories into a single aesthetic framework, Deakin recreates the landscape as a consistent and coherent image subject to the viewer’s gaze.

In 1907–8, Durand-Ruel & Sons loaned sixty-three to eighty-eight paintings for inclusion in an exhibition that traveled to seven different exhibition venues, bringing impressionism to Midwestern cities on an unprecedented scale and conclusively institutionalizing the movement. Such shows increased the movement’s prestige and encouraged US interaction with the movement. Considering aesthetic, economic, and curatorial aspects of the traveling exhibit, this article elucidates Midwestern museums’ importance in the development of a distinctly US relationship to impressionism.