Biography

The first Jewish artist to forge a professional career in Canada, William Raphael played a vital role in shaping the country’s artistic landscape. Born in 1833 in Eastern Europe and trained in Berlin, Raphael chose to exile himself in Montreal, where his genre scenes—rich in realism and rooted in local life—captured a growing nation in transition. Beyond the canvas, he left his mark as a teacher and as a founding figure of two major institutions: the Art Association of Montreal and the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts. But a tide of anti-Semitism that swept the globe clouded Raphael’s legacy and ultimately drove him to withdraw from the art world before his death in 1914.

Early Years and Artistic Training

William Raphael was born Israel Rafalsky in Prussia on August 22, 1833. One of several children of Paulena Samuel (1805–1852) and Wolf Rafalsky (1796–1856), he was raised in an Orthodox Jewish household in the town of Nakel (present-day Nakło nad Notecią in Poland). During Raphael’s youth, this region in Eastern Europe was an important centre for the Haskalah, or Jewish Enlightenment, a movement that encouraged the modernization of Jewish communities through exposure to more secular education and culture. Raphael benefited from this time of reform. He was educated in three languages—German, Hebrew, and Yiddish—and in 1850, he took his first lessons on the violin. Along with music, Raphael studied Romantic poetry and ancient history, broadening his cultural pursuits. At a very early age, he also began drawing and taking notes in his sketchbooks, a habit he kept up throughout his life.

On August 3, 1851, the eve of his eighteenth birthday, Raphael left his family home to pursue formal artistic training. As the artist mentions in a retrospective essay, he attended the “Royal Academy of Berlin,” or, the Royal Prussian Academy of Arts. Although the school’s archives have no record of his enrolment—many documents were destroyed during the Second World War—Raphael’s notebooks from the period confirm that he did indeed pay his tuition fees in September 1851. Raphael even specifies that he took “lessons with Professor Wolff,” most likely referring to the painter and portraitist Johann Eduard Wolff (1786–1868). Along with Wolff, the school boasted several teachers who were well known in Berlin society at the time, including portraitists Carl Joseph Begas (1794–1854) and Friedrich Wilhelm Heinrich Herbig (1788–1861), and landscape painter Ferdinand Konrad Bellermann (1814–1889). Raphael was likely influenced by several of these teachers as he began to develop his own artistic identity.

As part of his academic training, Raphael was exposed to two great models prevalent in European art schools in the nineteenth century: nature and antiquity. His notebooks contain drawings of live models and representations of figures from ancient Greece. Other sketches from this period focus on human anatomy. In one, for example, Raphael reproduces a flayed figure by French sculptor Edmé Bouchardon (1698–1762). He also created small studies of human body parts, such as an oil painting of a hand. These were the types of exercises that students in the academic system were expected to complete.

Unfortunately, this period in Berlin was marked by several deaths in Raphael’s family: first his mother in 1852; then his sisters Kalah and Bertha in 1853 and 1854; and finally his father in 1856. These events, combined with a population boom and fierce competition for jobs in Prussia, prompted Raphael to leave Europe and settle in North America. The young artist took care to draw sketches of his friends and family before his departure. Among his meagre belongings were a few works that would demonstrate his artistic skills, including some portraits he’d painted in 1855. Portrait of a Woman, dated June 8, captures the subject looking over her shoulder. While playing with strong contrasts of light and dark, Raphael shows great talent for depicting the woman’s face. Note the artist’s signature on the bottom left of this work, which confirms that by the 1850s, he had already changed his name from Israel Rafalsky to William Raphael.

Raphael crossed the Atlantic from Hamburg to New York aboard a pioneering steamship, the Borussia, whose maiden voyage had taken place just a few months earlier. The ship left port on December 2, 1856, but the crossing was disrupted by bad weather and a collision with a schooner, the Industry, on the night of December 19. Raphael produced two drawings of the scene, showing the schooner gradually sinking into the ocean. The captain and crew were rescued and taken aboard Raphael’s ship. Three days later, the Borussia docked in New York. Knowing only a few words of English but with the names and addresses of various acquaintances in hand, Raphael stayed in the city for a few months. On April 21, 1857, he left the United States by train to join his brother Meier Rafalsky, also known as Morris Raphaelsky (1825–1914), in Montreal.

Starting Out in Montreal

Although his brother Meier relocated to St. Louis, Missouri, in October 1857, young William Raphael found Montreal a favourable place to establish himself. At the time, there were no resident portrait painters in the city; it was mostly served by itinerant artists travelling from place to place. In fact, only the Irish-born James Duncan (1806–1881) had made his home in Montreal, where he painted landscapes and genre scenes.

Armed with the portraits that had crossed the Atlantic with him, Raphael soon managed to convince several prominent Montrealers of his talents. Members of the Silvermann family were the first to call on him, and commissions followed regularly from that point on. Like his contemporary Paul Kane (1810–1871), who also began his career as a portraitist, Raphael produced a substantial number of works, completing twelve commissions before the end of 1857. In 1858, he carried on at this prolific pace in Montreal, while also travelling to Quebec City to meet other clients.

Raphael’s portraits brought him to the attention of photographer William Notman (1826–1891). Notman had arrived in Montreal from Scotland in 1856 and opened a photographic studio at a time when this new medium—with its low cost and its ability to produce images quickly and easily—was enjoying great success. Even though the city already had a well-established daguerreotypist in T.C. [Thomas Coffin] Doane (1814–1896), Notman readily obtained numerous commissions and won several awards for his daguerreotypes and ambrotypes. He also counted on the support of the Montreal bourgeoisie and produced portraits of members of the city’s most prominent families, including the son of shipping magnate and financier Hugh Allan. Notman offered his clients portraits finished with oils or watercolours. The success of his business combining photography with painting allowed him to hire a variety of artists, including the Scottish-born painter Charles Smeaton (1838–1868). In 1859, he called on the services of William Raphael. This was a productive collaboration that resulted in many fine portraits, including one of Sir William Fenwick Williams, then commander-in-chief of the British forces in the colony. The portrait was temporarily exhibited at the Quebec stock exchange building in December 1859 and was described by the Quebec Morning Chronicle newspaper as “admirable” and “life-like.”

Raphael continued his work with Notman’s studio into the following year, as evidenced by an article in the Montreal Herald newspaper published on August 27, 1860, as well as several portraits dated that same year, including one of a woman. But by 1861, the business relationship was over, as Raphael himself noted to the press in 1886. His work with Notman had guaranteed him a stable income, but the end of the partnership offered Raphael the opportunity to pursue a personal practice focused on genre scenes.

Raphael began to produce works with many of the hallmarks of the Biedermeier style, an artistic movement that seems to have influenced his creative vision during his formative years in Berlin. With its emphasis on realism, Biedermeier aimed to depict subjects from everyday life. This was the context for Raphael’s piece The Old Pedlar, painted in July 1859. In September, the work was on display at Dawson & Sons, a prominent local firm selling books and stationery. Benjamin Dawson and his sons, Samuel Edward and William Valentine, were among the city’s most active cultural figures at the time. Their store was also one of the few places where photographs and paintings were exhibited and offered for sale, often in books illustrated with engravings. Here, Raphael’s The Old Pedlar did not go unnoticed. The Montreal Herald and Daily Commercial Gazette published some very positive lines on the subject:

A good painting is on view at Messrs. Dawson & Sons. The subject is the interior of a [peasant woman’s] humble dwelling with several figures, the principal one being a pedlar, no doubt in the fancy hardware line from the contents of his basket. He has just effected the sale of a looking-glass, and with open hand he is waiting to receive the ready for it…. All the figures seem full of life and feeling, even the dog, who is cautiously making up to the pedlar, is in true character.

The scene is described in detail, with the journalist praising the artist’s ability to create an original composition and capture the expressions that animate the characters. The writer also explicitly highlights the painter’s identity, telling readers, “The picture, a local production, has been supposed to be a copy, but it is really an original from the easel of W. Raphael, an Artist from the Berlin Academy, at present at Mr. Notman’s Studio.” With this article, Raphael began to gain recognition in his adopted city. From this point on, he inscribed “Montreal” in full on many of his paintings.

On December 17, 1859, in a sign of the painter’s increasing activity, the Morning Chronicle and Commercial and Shipping Gazette critiqued four works on display at the Quebec stock exchange building, including one entitled The School and a self-portrait. Then, in August 1860, Raphael’s latest creation, an allegorical painting entitled Union of Europe and America, was featured as part of the festivities for the visit of the Prince of Wales to Montreal. The iconography of this painting is unique in the artist’s repertoire. “Its design was a figure of Brittania, with a mural crown,” reported the Montreal Herald, “placing wreaths on the heads of a female figure representing Europe, and a male one in Indian costume, representing America, both mounting the steps to a throne.” A transparency of the work was illuminated in the evenings in Jacques Cartier Square, undoubtedly to the delight of spectators.

In this period, Raphael continued his personal work, focusing on genre scenes depicting the Canadian people and landscape, and significant places in the city. Some of the paintings from this time, such as Haymarket Square / Victoria Square, 1861, feature the Montreal haymarket. Others, such as Boy and a Cart, 1860, and Going to Town, 1862, show figures on horse-drawn sleighs or carts. Many of Raphael’s pieces from this period reflect the northern character of the British colony, calling to mind the work of Cornelius Krieghoff (1815–1872).

Raphael began his career during a period of artistic renewal in Montreal. Between 1858 and 1860, several foreign painters established themselves in the city, contributing to a more fertile cultural environment. Among these were the English-born artists C.J. Way (1835–1919) and John Arthur Fraser (1838–1898). Fraser later became a valued employee of William Notman’s. Similarly, in 1860, landscape painter Otto Reinhold Jacobi (1812–1901), a fellow Prussian, decided to make Montreal his home, as did animal painter Adolphe Vogt (1842–1871) in 1865.

As Montreal’s population swelled to 90,323 in 1861, it began to attract a growing number of art lovers and collectors who supported cultural initiatives such as a public art exhibition held at Bonaventure Hall in the summer of 1857. But the city was still without a permanent art museum and art school. To address the lack of official infrastructure for artists, members of the city’s intellectual and financial elite took the lead in forming a professional arts association. The first meeting of a group of twenty-three English-speaking gentlemen, including Anglican bishop Francis Fulford, took place at the home of William Notman on January 11, 1860. Only two painters, C.J. Way and William Raphael, were invited to take part in the project. Barely two weeks later, the group had established the foundation for what would later be called the Art Association of Montreal. According to art historian Jean Trudel, the association’s aims were to “build up and present a permanent collection of paintings and sculptures, organize temporary exhibitions and a program of animation, and create a specialized public library and a school of fine arts.” As a founding member, Raphael was a regular participant in the association’s activities, both its expositions and its conversazione (private evening discussions reserved for distinguished guests).

As he forged personal and professional relationships in the Montreal art scene, Raphael also became involved in the city’s small Jewish and German-speaking community. He painted portraits of some of its members, including Mr. Hermann Danziger in August 1857. Perhaps this is when Raphael first met Danziger’s daughter, Ernestina (1844–1925), with whom he became romantically involved. It’s unclear how this relationship began, but by 1861, according to the Canadian census, Raphael was living at the Danziger home at 63½ German Street. He courted the young woman under the watchful eye of members of the Danziger family and eventually asked her to marry him. Before their union was announced, the young couple were photographed separately by William Notman in 1862, each posing in an identical setting, perhaps on the same day. On October 29, 1862, their wedding was celebrated by the well-known rabbi Abraham de Sola at the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue of Montreal. The couple had the first of their nine children, a son they named Rudolph, in 1863.

Major Achievements

In January 1863, Montreal photographer Abner Bedee Taber (1832–1866) offered William Raphael a one-year contract to paint portraits based on his photographs. A Taber advertisement in the Montreal directory boasted that the painter was “well known as a first-class artist.” This offer guaranteed Raphael a regular income—he received fifteen dollars and thirty-eight cents every Saturday from the photographer—which he could use to finance the production of speculative works for the Montreal market. In the second half of the nineteenth century, the city’s art market consisted mainly of auctions or exhibitions of works in bookshops and framing stores. Raphael relied on the occasional support of Dawson & Sons and gallery owner William Scott (1831–1904) to buy or sell his paintings.

The artist also began making more ambitious compositions depicting urban life. One of these creations, entitled Bonsecours Market, was included in the second exhibition organized by the Art Association of Montreal (AAM) in February 1864. Raphael’s work, which was shown alongside paintings by Cornelius Krieghoff, Robert Scott Duncanson (1821–1872), and even J.M.W. Turner (1775–1851), won high praise at the conversazione held at the opening of the event, and that praise was echoed in the Montreal Herald:

An extremely clever picture was sent by Mr. Raphael, a young Canadian artist. The subject was a very characteristic street scene in front of the Bonsecours Market in the height of the early morning business in the winter time. The figures are full of life and animation, and the costumes, the carriages, the snow, and the winter atmosphere just after sunrise, are all rendered, with remarkable happiness and faithfulness. This is a genuine Canadian picture in every sense of the word.

In the eyes of connoisseurs and critics, Raphael—now identified in the press as a “Canadian artist” rather than a student of the Berlin Academy—had produced a work that was his first major achievement. Although the 1864 painting has been lost, a drawing from the same year gives us insight into the composition of this winter scene. Raphael also produced a variation of the painting sixteen years later, in 1880, which allows us to better grasp its full significance. The later work captures the hustle and bustle of a busy street full of temporary stalls lined up against the facade of the Bonsecours Market. In both pieces, the scene is framed by distinctive Montreal landmarks, including the high dome of the market and the steeple of Notre-Dame-de-Bon-Secours Chapel.

Raphael’s professional success most likely prompted his father-in-law, Hermann Danziger, to introduce him to the closed circle of Freemasonry in April 1864. Through this family connection, Raphael was able to enter the ranks of this secret society, which in turn made it possible for him to broaden his social and cultural circle. He certainly met members of the upper class who were willing to commission him to paint their portraits.

Raphael also continued his own practice, presenting a painting at the AMM’s third exhibition, which opened on February 27, 1865. That summer, he took a short trip to Scotland, during which he added various drawings, including Arrocher, 1865, to his notebooks. His reasons for going to Scotland remain unknown. From this journey, he produced only one painting, depicting Loch Achray and Ben Venue mountain, in 1869. On his return to Canada, Raphael rented his family’s first home, a few steps away from his in-laws’ house, at 98 German Street—a street that, as its name suggests, was mainly populated by German-speaking Canadians. The family remained at this address until 1887.

In his new home, he began work on a composition set behind the Bonsecours Market. A preparatory painting was presented at the Montreal Provincial Exhibition in the fall of 1865. Although the work won him first prize for an oil painting, some newspapers condemned the caricatured appearance of the figures in the scene and took the opportunity to ridicule the artist’s surname: the Montreal painter was, according to the critics, no match for the great Renaissance master Raphael (1483–1520). Although stung by these remarks, Raphael created a larger version of the Bonsecours Market scene in 1866, adding a detail that visually countered the petty comments of the critics.

In the 1860s, Raphael’s works were rooted in local reality, sometimes with a humorous edge, but he also tackled more imaginative themes. Some paintings from this period feature unusual encounters inspired by marginal characters (such as fortune tellers and tarot readers) and set in vast landscapes, as in Fireside Chat in the Clearing, 1867. Perhaps influenced by the African American painter Robert Scott Duncanson, who showed his 1861 work Land of the Lotus Eaters in Montreal in 1863 and 1864, Raphael seems to have let his mind wander to more fanciful images. Like Duncanson, who was associated with the Hudson River School, Raphael opts for a panoramic format, bathing the landscape in late-day light while the mountains in the background seem to disappear. Also like Duncanson, he populates the scene with characters who seem to have sprung from the imagination, or even from another era. One of his compositions produced in this vein earned him a favourable review in London’s Art Journal. Although this encouraged him to continue this approach for some time, he abandoned it in the early 1870s.

Teaching and Shaping the Nation’s Art

William Raphael opened his own studio in 1866, in a space at 147 rue Saint-Jacques. As reported in the city directory, he presented himself as both an “artist and teacher of figure & landscape painting.” In fact, over the next few years, Raphael was as committed to teaching the arts as he was to advancing his own painting career. At a time when no Montreal institution offered training in the fine arts, the young painter found many people eager to learn artistic techniques and to develop the ability to judge works, part of the cultural veneer expected in Victorian society. Perhaps to better serve his students, Raphael moved his studio four times between 1867 and 1877. But he always made sure he remained at the centre of urban activity, choosing spaces on rue Saint-Jacques and Place d’Armes. In 1878, he moved his studio again—this time to 193 rue Saint-Pierre, a space he kept until around 1883.

In addition to launching his teaching career, Raphael joined the Society of Canadian Artists, which was founded by John Arthur Fraser in 1867. He became one of the first members of this organization, whose primary aim was to promote the work of local artists at the dawn of Confederation. Within this group, Raphael joined the ranks of significant painters such as Frederic Bell-Smith (1846–1923), James Duncan, Allan Edson (1846–1888), and Henry Sandham (1842–1910). Despite the society’s short-lived existence (it shut down in 1873), Raphael took part in its first two exhibitions. He exhibited a total of five works, including two paintings that were later distributed more widely via chromolithography.

The painting entitled The Early Bird Picks Up the Worm, shown at the first exhibition in 1868, was reproduced by chromolithographers Roberts & Reinhold in 1869. The following year, Habitants Attacked by Wolves, unveiled at the second exhibition, was reproduced by Burland & Lafricain. In both cases, the prints received good reviews in the press and met certain cultural expectations. In the 1860s, chromolithography was embraced by many amateur collectors and connoisseurs, who viewed it as a process that perfectly imitated watercolours and oil paintings. This means of reproduction made Raphael’s art more affordable and more widely available to a general audience.

From the mid-1860s to the early 1870s, while still teaching, Raphael began to diversify his thematic repertoire by producing landscapes. With the growth of the railroads, he made numerous summer trips, discovering new places to include in works like Boating at Dusk, 1878. In addition to recording drawings in his notebooks, he produced plein air sketches to better capture outdoor scenes. He spent the summer of 1869 in the Charlevoix region, travelling from Murray Bay to Cap-à-l’Aigle, and was very enthusiastic about these places, which had to that point been relatively unknown to painters. “Mr. Raphael speaks in high terms of a district which may well be called the Switzerland of Canada,” the Quebec Daily Mercury reported, “and which will yet be the favorite sketching ground of the artists of America.” Drawings such as Cap-à-l’Aigle, made in August 1878, are reminders that he continued to travel and record his impressions in his sketches.

In addition to landscapes, Raphael increasingly turned his attention to depicting local characters, particularly the figure of the habitant. For example, Habitant (or Preparing to Smoke), c.1872–1910, is a typical composition: the figure is depicted in a closed, windowless room, alone and near a stove. From 1872 onward, Raphael created many scenes featuring the habitant, including Coachman Standing at Rest Smoking a Pipe, 1881.

Despite an economic crisis that raged in the West starting in 1873, Raphael continued his activities and, presumably, to ensure a certain income, accepted various commissions for portraits. These included a series of seven family portraits painted in the mid-1870s of Dr. Louis-Édouard Desjardins; his wife, Zaïde Paré; their respective parents; and an uncle, Father Joseph-Octave Paré, canon of the Montreal cathedral. The Portrait of Louis-Édouard Desjardins, 1877, bears a striking resemblance to a photograph published in 1875 in a book by the Reverend J. Douglas Borthwick. At the time, photography was becoming an increasingly popular tool for painters like Raphael, who could use photographs, rather than preparatory sketches, as accurate references.

Raphael also began receiving requests from members of Montreal’s medical community. At the end of the 1870s, for example, Dr. William Osler commissioned him to depict organs and various pathologies to illustrate Osler’s articles and supplement his teaching. A drawing dated 1880, formerly held at McGill University’s Osler Library, exemplified this unusual creative approach by the artist. Its raw style served as a reminder that the image was intended for a limited audience of students and medical professionals. Though medical illustration was only a short-lived endeavour, it was nevertheless a rare opportunity for Raphael to build upon skills he had developed during his training in Berlin, where he often made sketches depicting human anatomy, such as skulls and leg muscles.

A Cornerstone of Canadian Art

In 1879, following a generous bequest from the well-known art collector Benaiah Gibb, the Art Association of Montreal (AAM) opened its first permanent pavilion in Phillips Square, ushering in a new era in Canadian art. As an accomplished artist with a well-established reputation, William Raphael was naturally included in the exhibition held at the building’s inauguration in May 1879. Attended by the governor general of Canada, the Marquess of Lorne (John Campbell, 1845–1914), and his wife, Princess Louise (1848–1939), it was one of the city’s most prestigious events.

Several European paintings were displayed alongside works by Canadian artists like Henry Sandham, James Duncan, Daniel Fowler (1810–1894), and Thomas Mower Martin (1838–1934). Raphael exhibited an oil painting entitled Habitants Pursued by Wolves. The work cannot be located today, but a charcoal drawing called Pack of Wolves, 1879, preserved at the McCord Stewart Museum, may be a preparatory study.

Also in 1879, building on his ties to the arts community, Raphael became a member of the Ontario Society of Artists (OSA), an association founded seven years earlier by John Arthur Fraser. Membership allowed him to take part in the group’s annual exhibition, held in Toronto in September of that year. He presented four paintings, including the ambitious landscape Indian Encampment on the Lower St. Lawrence Estuary, 1879. The exhibition was covered in several newspapers because of a visit from the Marquess of Lorne, and also because it gave rise to a project to form a royal academy of arts in Canada. Seizing the opportunity, Lucius R. O’Brien (1832–1899), the vice-president of the OSA, drew up a constitution and gave the governor general the names of eight artists to be considered as the first academicians. The select group included William Raphael (who became a naturalized Canadian in 1872), indicating the high esteem in which he was held.

With the official inauguration of the Canadian Academy of Arts on March 6, 1880 (it took the name Royal Canadian Academy of Arts in 1882), Raphael became one of the founding academicians. His large composition Indian Encampment on the Lower St. Lawrence Estuary was accepted as a reception piece. The ambitious nightscape, depicting the high cliffs of Cap-Blanc, was also part of the academy’s first exhibition, which opened at Ottawa’s Clarendon Hotel on March 8. The painting was additionally reproduced in the April 10 edition of the Canadian Illustrated News, alongside three other works presented at the first exhibition. The pieces were accompanied by a few words that captured the public‘s intense interest in the academy:

[W]e publish to-day a few of the diploma pictures which figured at the late Exhibition of the Canadian Academy of Arts at Ottawa. In almost every respect, this first test Exhibition was a success, testifying to the ability of our native artists, and giving the very best reply to the croakers who pretended that the country was not aesthetically prepared for so important an institution.

The governor general’s support for the arts in Canada was reaffirmed when it was announced that he had purchased six works from the exhibition for his personal collection, including a painting by Homer Watson (1855–1936), another by Fraser, three works by O’Brien, and a painting by William Raphael. Raphael’s piece, L’Habitant (The Habitant), received a rave review in Rose-Belford’s Canadian Monthly and National Review, which called it “simply perfect.”

The accolades and high-profile support encouraged Raphael to invest in the new institution. He became one of the first members of its board, took part in various meetings, and made sure to participate in its annual exhibitions. In 1882, he was even named a member of the organizing committee for the next exhibition, to be held in Montreal, sharing the honour with Napoléon Bourassa (1827–1916), Thomas Mower Martin, and William Nicoll Cresswell (1818–1888). He continued to play a constant role in Montreal’s artistic development, which included accepting an invitation in 1879 to teach painting to the Sisters of Sainte-Anne congregation. This helped him establish links with the community, which then engaged him to create some religious works for the chapel, a notable career departure.

Raphael’s stellar reputation and his fifteen years of experience as a teacher made him an obvious candidate when the Art Association of Montreal began looking for someone to oversee a series of courses the organization wanted to offer at its new pavilion in Phillips Square. This initiative would allow the association to achieve one of its core objectives: to educate and train Canadian artists. At the end of 1880, the AAM hired Raphael and announced in the newspapers that three courses were now open for enrolment. According to the Gazette, one of those courses was “in figure painting and drawing, under the instruction of Mr. Raphael.” The other two courses were in composition and landscape painting, taught by Allan Edson, and modelling and sculpture, taught by François Van Luppen (1838–1899). Classes began in January 1881 and attracted forty-two students in all. Edson did not continue teaching the following autumn, and Raphael took over the composition and landscape course.

As these first classes were being offered, the AAM began work on a “portfolio containing ten autotype copies of original pictures,” intended to be distributed to all its members. Printed in 1881 by George-Édouard Desbarats (1838–1893), the portfolio included pieces by Way, Edson, O’Brien, Fraser, and Sandham. Raphael was the only artist to be represented twice, with Scene at Murray Bay, 1881, which offers a view of the majestic rocky cape similar to that found in Indian Encampment on the Lower St. Lawrence Estuary, and Study of the Head of an Iroquois Chief, Caughnawaga, 1881. The collection was a chance to promote not only Raphael’s reputation but also his abilities as a teacher in figure and landscape painting.

As a leading player on the Montreal and broader Canadian art scene, Raphael was also invited by Lucius R. O’Brien to take part in the book Picturesque Canada, a kind of travelogue that would be richly illustrated with engravings. Four of his works were commissioned to be reproduced in the book, which was edited by George Monro Grant, rector of Queen’s University in Kingston. Presumably because of his earlier work, Raphael was asked to create images for the section devoted to French Canadians. The pieces were An Old Habitant (based on an 1881 painting), Habitant with Snowshoes, and Half-Breed Fisherman. A final image, used at the start of the chapter, depicts a seated man with a pipe in his hand—a subject often taken up by the artist. The colossal work, published in 1882, had 880 pages and over 500 woodcuts in two leather-bound volumes and was one of the most sumptuous printed works to appear in Canada at the time.

Tensions and Clashing Visions

William Raphael’s career success did not shield him from the struggles that could emerge in the rather restricted artistic environment of the early 1880s. He found himself immersed in various disputes that reflected the rise of anti-Semitism following the 1881 assassination of Tsar Alexander II—an event falsely blamed on the Jewish community. Anti-Jewish sentiment led not only to pogroms in Russia and Romania and to the scandalous Dreyfus affair in France, but also to racial discrimination that emboldened the rhetoric of the most fearsome anti-Semites, including historian and journalist Goldwin Smith (1823–1910) in Toronto.

Smith, who described Jews as “parasites,” spread his racist ideas in the columns of many newspapers. He was one of several Canadian writers peddling anti-Jewish sentiment in the 1880s; others included John Wilson Bengough (1851–1923) in Toronto, through his magazine Grip, and Jules-Paul Tardivel (1851–1905) in Quebec City, through his newspaper La Vérité. Like some members of the clergy, these people helped to spread a negative view of Jews in Quebec and throughout Canada, and Smith’s ideas in particular later strongly influenced several prominent politicians and statesmen, including Henri Bourassa, William Lyon Mackenzie King, and Vincent Massey.

It was in this context that the Art Association of Montreal decided, in December 1882, not to renew William Raphael’s appointment as a professor. The organization suspended classes for a few months, during which time the board of directors formed an arts education committee and began to develop a new vision, taking as a model the art school at the South Kensington Museum in London (renamed the Victoria & Albert Museum in 1899). Strongly convinced of the supposed artistic superiority of this institution, the members of the AAM’s education committee set about recruiting a British teacher. This approach was unsuccessful, and the association opted instead for a teacher from Montreal’s English-speaking community who was familiar with the principles of academic training. In 1883, the AAM introduced portraitist Robert Harris (1849–1919) as its new—and only—teacher. Trained not in London but in Paris, Harris set out to duplicate the French Beaux-Arts model.

This professional blow did not prevent Raphael, now on the cusp of turning fifty, from continuing his artistic work and teaching. Perhaps as a response to the AAM’s machinations, he chose to show a sketch depicting a scene from one of his popular plein air painting sessions as part of the organization’s spring 1883 exhibition. It should be emphasized that this painting reflects an avant-garde teaching approach, indicating that Raphael was likely one of the first art teachers in Canada to give outdoor drawing and painting classes, many years before landscape painter William Brymner (1855–1925) followed suit.

Raphael also continued to teach in several other places. In addition to giving classes to the nuns of Sainte-Anne, he became a professor of oil painting at the Montreal Society of Decorative Art. In 1884, he was also recruited by Mrs. Lovell’s Educational Institute, an English-speaking Montreal school for the education of young girls. And he continued to offer painting and drawing lessons in his own studio, where he had been welcoming and training students for close to two decades.

His extensive involvement in arts education over the years prompted him to take steps to obtain funding for his studio. He applied to the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts (RCA), which has had a budget to support arts education in Canada since 1884. Raphael’s applications that year and in 1885 failed to convince the board, however. Faced with these successive rejections, he must have felt as if the Canadian art world—which had once welcomed him so warmly, and had even relied on his reputation at various foundational moments to achieve its goals—had suddenly turned its back on him.

In 1884, Raphael relocated his studio to 1310 rue Sainte-Catherine, not far from the AAM. His courses competed directly with those offered by the association. He placed numerous newspaper ads, in both the Gazette and the Montreal Star, to publicize his classes and recruit new students. These were repeated the following year, in September and October, and every year after that until September 1908. The AAM could not have been pleased by the success of William Raphael’s studio, as reported in the newspapers of the day. On June 6, 1885, for example, the Montreal Star covered a drawing exhibition he’d organized and highlighted the work of his students, many of whom were associated with influential Montreal families, such as the Lighthalls, Lymans, Allans, and Morgans. A few days later, Raphael himself was also singled out for praise by the Gazette:

The first thought that comes to the beholder is that the teacher had undoubtedly impressed upon his pupils the duty of striving after truth above all things…. [The drawings exhibited are] a more praiseworthy proof of the instructor’s tact and assiduity that, while aiding the innate gift of each of his pupils to unfold in its own way, he has been able to impart to them all a real appreciation of artistic truthfulness with the feeling for accuracy in technique.

That year, Raphael had thirty students, according to the Montreal Star. This was an impressive number in comparison to the thirty-seven enrolled in the courses offered by Robert Harris at the AAM, which had superior premises and financial resources.

In 1886, William Brymner succeeded Harris as course director. He continued teaching in the French academic tradition established by his predecessor. That same year, the press began to question the supposed impartiality of the organizing committees of the AAM and RCA exhibitions. Attention was called to the favouritism shown towards certain painters—especially Brymner, O’Brien, and Harris. The lack of financial transparency was also openly criticized, as was the authority of the AAM secretary, a Mr. English, who seemed to run the institution as he pleased.

As the AAM found itself embroiled in controversy, it attempted to divert attention to William Raphael. Mr. English made contemptuous and misleading remarks about him that were eventually reported in the newspaper: “Raphael, being a teacher, cannot be expected to paint, besides he never had any education except what he got in Notman’s studio, painting photographs. All the pictures which he has sent to the gallery for the last few years have been failures.” Faced with this defamation, Raphael took to his pen to correct the facts. “For those of the public who may have been misled by the information received from this gentleman concerning me,” he replied, “I may state that I was born and educated in Germany, that I was a student of the Royal Academy of Berlin for nearly eight years uninterruptedly, and received a first-class education as an artist.”

Raphael’s obvious desire to retaliate against a detractor—even if it meant adding a few years to his training (which lasted for five years, instead of eight)—is understandable. But for the AAM, it was a successful campaign to redirect public attention from its own shortcomings and discredit an important rival in arts education in Montreal. This attack marked a turning point in William Raphael’s career. If he persisted in giving courses, he realized that it would no longer be possible for him to reconnect with this network. His new works were increasingly ignored by the critics; all eyes were now on Brymner and his entourage.

Compared to Raphael, who had been active in Montreal cultural circles for nearly thirty years, Brymner was a relative newcomer. But he could boast of his recent training in Paris, notably at the Académie Julian, with teachers such as William Bouguereau (1825–1905). Both his training and his work—with its focus on a lighter palette and bucolic subjects—appealed to the bourgeois tastes of the time. Brymner soon marked Canadian art with these aesthetic trends, which also contributed to changes in people’s appraisal of Raphael’s work. As a man of the clan, Brymner didn’t hesitate to exclude Raphael from his orbit, and then, on the strength of his authority and his position at the AAM, he began to question Raphael’s teaching in public lectures.

In 1890, Raphael helped found a new cultural association, the Pen and Pencil Club, but he had to distance himself from it when Brymner and Harris became members the following year. Raphael also resigned from the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts in 1896, no doubt disheartened by the institution’s lack of financial support for his career and the reality of the professional and social landscape of Montreal.

Later Years

By the end of the nineteenth century, William Raphael had a large family of children and grandchildren. Some of them settled in the United States, while his youngest daughter and his father-in-law lived in his home. He continued his work but kept his distance from the power struggles he’d experienced for so many years. He revisited some favourite subjects in his repertoire, creating peaceful landscapes, such as Two Women in Rowboat Near Shoreline, 1911, and scenes from everyday life, such as The Artist’s House in Victoria St., 1908, as well as portraits of his family and even his beloved dogs.

Still active as a teacher, Raphael told a journalist in 1888 that “[w]ithout teaching, no local artist could live here.” His studio welcomed students until around 1909, and in 1896, he also agreed to teach art classes in Sherbrooke, in the Art Building erected in 1887. Until his last days, he remained available to give lessons and advice to the religious community of the Sisters of Sainte-Anne. Over the years, he had met and trained several nuns, including Sister Marie-Hélène-de-la-Croix (née Élisabeth Martin, 1861–1956). For their part, the nuns had repeatedly demonstrated their appreciation of his knowledge and pedagogy. In 1910, the community acquired Raphael’s collection of plasters. In a letter dated September 17, he wrote: “I am most pleased to know that my Collection will be in an institution in which I had the pleasure to be for many years so well acquainted with many of the Sisters.”

Sister Marie-Hélène-de-la-Croix and the entire community of nuns were quick to recognize the qualities of both artist and teacher. In 1911, Sister Marie-Hélène painted a portrait of Raphael, which she presented to him as a gift in 1912. At the same time, she was probably working on a second portrait, to be kept in the congregation’s painting studio. She took pains to keep the format and dimensions consistent with a series of previously purchased works representing the great painters of the Renaissance and Baroque periods. The portrait of William Raphael eventually became part of a suite of paintings of artists including Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519), Raphael, Titian (c.1488–1576), Guido Reni (1575–1642), Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640), and Anthony van Dyck (1599–1641). In this way, the Montreal painter took his place among the great masters of art history.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, Raphael no longer enjoyed the prestige he had in the late 1870s. His works were not the talk of the newspapers. Although a few people still came to chat with the old artist in his studio, he didn’t seek the attention of the art world. His professional and personal work was done, and he could look back in peace on the full life he had lived, from Nakel to Montreal. When he died on March 13, 1914, the last tributes to the painter appeared in the daily papers. Despite his disconnection from the cultural scene in the twilight of his life, the artist was not entirely forgotten.