IN THE MID-1940s Bessie Lasky embarked on what would be her most ambitious painting project. Inspired by Jesse Jr's enthusiastic suggestion that she paint the twenty-one California Missions ("You can do it, Bess!"), she set out to do just that. The result, thirty-two Mission paintings, first exhibited at the Crocker Art Gallery in Sacramento (1950), are now a permanent part of the Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History. Below is a sampling: