Habitant (or Preparing to Smoke), c.1872–1910

In the early 1870s, William Raphael introduced an approach that would later become a recurrent part of his work. In a departure from the genre scenes and portraits that had defined so much of his practice, he began to paint highly simplified renderings of French Canadian habitants—generally farmers living in rural Quebec—shown in domestic settings. The image seen here is somewhat indebted to Cornelius Krieghoff (1815–1872) and his The Smoker (Le Fumeur), c.1855–1860, and precedes by several years the work of Marc-Aurèle de Foy Suzor-Coté (1869–1937), who often painted the same subject, as in Father Moreau (Le Père Moreau), 1921. For Raphael, this new approach allowed him to reconstruct, in a sensitive and empathetic way, the world of these modest people.

The first known example of this subject in Raphael’s work is found in a lithograph produced in 1872. The figure is identified as “Mr. Sarrasin” from Saint-Gabriel-de-Brandon. Later, Raphael stopped naming the model in order to give a more encompassing scope to his depictions of rural French Canadian life. He produced variations and replicas of the subject until the end of his career.

The bearded man in Habitant (or Preparing to Smoke), painted between 1872 and 1910, is shown in a rustic setting, his face in profile, holding a pipe in his hands. There are no protruding red noses or toothless mouths, as in some of Krieghoff’s paintings, to provoke humour; Raphael’s habitant is portrayed in a solemn—even pensive—attitude. He is dressed in traditional winter garb: a hood fastened with a long red sash, a blue tuque, and moccasins. He’s seated on a simple wooden chair; on the floor is a dark brown spittoon, for chewing tobacco, on a pink catalogne (or woven carpet) with burgundy-red, straw-yellow, green, and pale-pink stripes. Next to the man is a large double-decker wood stove decorated with reliefs. Massive and low, it also features a round opening at the bottom (for adjusting the air draft), allowing a glimpse of the bright fire within. On top are a kettle and a metal saucepan. The latter, despite its lid, lets out a few clouds of steam. The decor is limited to a wall shelf on the left and a narrow hanging sheet on the right. The man is motionless; the artist has focused on his clothes and surroundings.

This type of work, although sober, was very popular with collectors of the period. In 1880, for example, the Marquess of Lorne (1845–1914), then governor general of Canada, purchased one of Raphael’s paintings of a habitant. In 1882, that composition was made into an engraving by C.J. Wardell and inserted in the book Picturesque Canada, as the frontispiece to the chapter entitled “French-Canadian Life and Character.” By appearing in this important work, the image thus becomes the emblematic figure of French-speaking Quebec. The habitant, as described by the book’s author, George Monro Grant, is a farmer attached to conservative, traditional values and a “hard worker” smoking “the evil-smelling native tobacco.”