Sources & Resources

William Raphael’s work, unlike that of contemporaries such as Cornelius Krieghoff, Napoléon Bourassa, and William Brymner, is not widely known. Beyond this book, only one in-depth study has been done to better define the artist and situate him historically—Sharon Goelman’s master’s thesis, submitted in 1978. Prior to its digitization, Goelman’s thesis was restricted to the shelves of the Concordia University library. Although Goleman has since published two more texts on Raphael, his life, work, and legacy remain insufficiently studied within the discipline of Canadian art. The resources below are breadcrumbs to guide future scholars.

Key Exhibitions

The artist’s environment and his professional associations and relationships are reflected by the exhibitions in which he participated during his lifetime. Interest in William Raphael’s work waned in the final years of his life. After his death, his works were largely relegated to the background of Canadian art history, except for a few essential paintings. The first posthumous retrospective devoted to the artist was organized in 1996 at the Walter Klinkhoff Gallery in Montreal.

Posthumous Exhibitions

Journals Reviewing Raphael’s Work

The Art Journal (London)

Canadian Illustrated News

Daily Witness

Evening Star

Evening Telegraph and Daily Commercial Advertiser

The Gazette (Montreal)

Hamilton Spectator

Le Journal de Québec

La Minerve

Montreal Herald and Daily Commercial Gazette

Montreal Star

Morning Chronicle and Commercial and Shipping Gazette

The New York Times

The Order

Ottawa Daily Citizen

Ottawa Journal

Le Pays

Le Progrès de l’Est: organ for the people of the Eastern Townships

Quebec Daily Mercury

Rose-Belford’s Canadian Monthly and National Review

Toronto Star

Selected Critical Writings on Raphael

Béland, Mario. “Avant la dernière tempête.” Cap-aux-Diamants, no. 53 (1998): 59.

Goelman, Sharon. “William Raphael, R.C.A. (1833–1914).” Master’s thesis, Concordia University, 1978.

—-. William Raphael, R.C.A. (1833–1914). Montreal: Walter Klinkhoff Gallery, 1996. Exhibition catalogue.

—-. “Raphael, William.” Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 14. Quebec and Toronto: Université Laval and University of Toronto, 1998.

Schachter, June. “William Osler and William Raphael.” Osler Library, McGill University, Osler Library Newsletter, nos. 83–84 (1996–97): 1–3.

Selected Writings Referencing Raphael

Béland, Mario. “De Berczy à Krieghoff: Peintres étrangers au Bas-Canada 1790–1850.” Cap-aux-Diamants, no. 37 (1994): 10–17.

—-. “La muse hivernale: fascination des artistes étrangers.” Cap-aux-Diamants, no. 24 (1991): 50–54.

—-. “Un peintre allemand à Montréal.” Cap-aux-Diamants, no. 38 (1994): 65.

—-, ed. La peinture au Québec, 1820–1850, nouveaux regards, nouvelles perspectives. Québec: Musée du Québec and Les publications du Québec, 1991.

Bouchard, Lydia. “Les paysages québécois de William Brymner, expérience de la nature comme lieu identitaire canadien au tournant du XXe siècle.” Master’s thesis, Université du Québec à Montréal, 2009.

Boulizon, Guy. Le paysage dans la peinture au Québec. Saint-Philippe-de-Laprairie: Éditions Marcel Broquet, 1984.

Boutilier, Alicia, and Paul Maréchal, eds. William Brymner: Artist, Teacher, Colleague. Kingston: Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Queen’s University, 2010.

Cambron, Micheline. Cultural Life in Montreal around 1900. Montreal: Fides, 2005.

Cavell, Edward, and Dennis Reid. When Winter Was King: The Image of Winter in 19th Century Canada. Banff: Altitude Publishing, in association with the Whyte Museum of the Rockies, 1988.

Colgate, William. Canadian Art: Its Origin and Development. Toronto: McGraw-Hill Ryerson,1967 (1943).

Dumas, Paul. “Pre-Contemporary Canadian Painting in the Collections of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts.” Vie des arts 20, no. 82 (1976): 31–35, 89–90.

Gavidia, Isolda. “Les théories ruskiennes de l’authenticité et leurs représentations dans les paysages nord-américains.” Master’s thesis, Université Laval, 2009.

Godsell, Patricia. Enjoying Canadian Painting. Toronto: General Publishing Co. Ltd., 1976.

Goldfarb, Hilliard T., ed. Expanding Horizons: Painting and Photography of American and Canadian Landscape, 1860–1918. Montreal: Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, 2009.

Grenier, Marlène. “Les artistes propagateurs de l’idéal allemand en art pictural et en sculpture au Canada au XIX^esiècle.” Master’s thesis, Université Laval, 1996.

Gubbay, Aline. A View of Their Own: The Story of Westmount. Montreal: Price-Patterson Ltd.,1998.

Harper, John Russell. Early Painters and Engravers in Canada, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1970.

—-. Painting in Canada: A History. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1966.

Hubbard, Robert Hamilton, ed. An Anthology of Canadian Art. Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1960.

Hubbard, Robert Hamilton, and Jean René Ostiguy. Three Hundred Years of Canadian Art. Ottawa: National Gallery of Canada, 1967.

Hubbard, Robert Hamilton, and Northrop Frye. Canadian Landscape Painting 1670–1930: The Artist and the Land. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1973.

Ketner, Joseph D. The Emergence of the African-American Artist: Robert S. Duncanson. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1993.

Lacroix, Laurier. “La collection Maurice et Andrée Corbeil.” Vie des arts, 18, no. 72 (1973): 24–31.

—-. “La construction picturale du Nord. La contribution des artistes canadiens au tournant du vingtième siècle.” In Couleurs et lumières du Nord, edited by Maria Walecka-Garbalinska and Daniel Chartier. Stockholm: Acta Universitatis Stockholmiensis, 2008.

—-. “Montreal and the Origins of the Canadian Academy of Arts.” Vie des arts 24, no. 98 (1980): 20–23.

—-. “Run Krieghoff cours.” Journal of Canadian Art History 24 (2003): 60–71.

Lerner, Loren, and Mary F. Williamson. Art and Architecture in Canada: A Bibliography and Guide to the Literature to 1981. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1991, 2 volumes.

Lerner, Loren, and Suzanne Rackover. “Jews and Canadian Art.” In Canada’s Jews: In Time, Space and Spirit, edited by Ira Robinson. Brighton: Academic Studies Press, 2013.

Martin, Denis, and Michèle Grandbois. La collection des dessins et estampes: 80 œuvres choisies. Québec: Musée du Québec, 1991.

Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Quebec and Canadian Art, Montreal: Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, 2012.

Morisset, Gérard. La peinture traditionnelle au Canada français. Ottawa: Le Cercle du livre de France (L’encyclopédie du Canada français, t. II), 1960.

Mulaire, Bernard. “Olindo Gratton et Louis-Philippe Hébert: Une relation professionnelle entre deux sculpteurs à la fin du XIX^esiècle.” Journal of Canadian Art History 12, no. 1 (1989): 22–49.

Nadeau-Saumier, Monique. “Un espace et un lieu de culture. Le Art Building de Sherbrooke 1887–1927.” PhD dissertation, Université du Québec à Montréal, 2007.

Pearse, Harold. From Drawing to Visual Culture: A History of Art Education. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2006.

Poulter, Gillian. “Becoming Native in a Foreign Land: Visual Culture, Sport, and Spectacle in the Construction of National Identity in Montreal, 1840–1885.” PhD dissertation, York University, 1999.

Ramsay, Ellen Louise. “The Promotion of the Fine Arts in Canada, 1880–1924: The Development of Art Patronage and the Formation of Public Policy.” PhD dissertation, University College London, 1987.

Reid, Dennis. A Concise History of Canadian Painting. Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1988.

—-. Our Own Country Canada: Being an Account of the National Aspirations of the Principal Landscape Artists in Montreal and Toronto 1860–1890. Ottawa: National Gallery of Canada and National Museums of Canada, 1979.

Robert, Guy. La peinture au Québec depuis ses origines. Montréal: Québec Amérique, 1985 (1978).

Sicotte, Hélène. “L’implantation de la galerie d’art à Montréal: Le cas de W. Scott & Sons, 1859–1914. Comment la révision du concept d’œuvre d’art autorisa la spécialisation du commerce d’art.” PhD dissertation, Université du Québec à Montréal, 2003.

Triggs, Stanley G. William Notman: The Stamp of a Studio. Toronto: Art Gallery of Ontario and Coach House Press, 1985.

Trudel, Jean. “L’Art Association of Montreal: Les années d’incertitude: 1863–1877.” Journal of Canadian Art History 29 (2008): 116–45.

—-. “Aux origines du Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal : la fondation de l’Art Association of Montréal en 1860.” Journal of Canadian Art History 15, no. 1 (1992): 31–62.

—-. “Une élite et son musée.” Cap-aux-Diamants, no. 25 (1991): 22–25.

Vallée, Anne-Élisabeth. “La contribution artistique, pédagogique et théorique de Napoléon Bourassa à la vie culturelle montréalaise entre 1855 et 1890.” PhD dissertation, Université du Québec à Montréal, 2009.

—-. Napoléon Bourassa et la vie culturelle à Montréal au XIX^esiècle. Montreal: Leméac, 2010.

Further Reading

Bell, Duncan. The Idea of Greater Britain: Empire and the Future of World Order, 1860–1900. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011.

Brown, Michael. Jew or Juif? Jews, French Canadians, and Anglo-Canadians: 1759–1914. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1986.

—-. “The American Connection of Canadian Jews: 1759–1914.” AJS Review 3 (1978): 21–77.

—-. “Early Zionism in Canada and the United States.” Jewish Social Studies 44, no. 2 (Spring 1982): 149–68.

Cohen, Naomi W. “American Jewish Reactions to Anti-Semitism in Western Europe, 1875–1900.” Proceedings of the American Academy for Jewish Research 45 (1978): 29–65.

Feldman, David. “Jews and the British Empire c.1900.” History Workshop Journal, no. 63 (2007): 70-89.

Horsman, Reginald. “Origins of Racial Anglo-Saxonism in Great Britain before 1850.” Journal of the History of Ideas 37, no. 3 (1976): 387–410.

Kaufmann, Eric P. The Rise and Fall of Anglo-America. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2004.

Lessard, Michel. La nouvelle encyclopédie des antiquités du Québec. Montreal: Les Éditions de l’Homme, 2007.

Mendelson, Alan. Exiles from Nowhere: The Jews and the Canadian Elite. Montreal: Robin Brass Studio.

Neumann-Schliski, Jens. “Un programme commun? Conceptions de l’identité juive dans les Archives israélites et l’Allgemeine Zeitung des Judenthums, 1840–1881.” In Expériences croisées: Juifs de France et d’Allemagne aux XIXe et XXe siècles, edited by Heidi Knörzer. Paris: Éditions de l’éclat, 2010.

Pearce, Lisa D., and Claire C. Gilliland. Religion in America. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2020.

Wagner, Jonathan. A History of Migration from Germany to Canada, 1850–1939. Vancouver: UBC Press, 2006.