Pinney’s, auction, Montreal, 7 December 1999, lot E125 as dated 1896
Acquired by the present Private Collection, December 1999
Exhibited
Possibly “Seventh Annual Exhibition of the Ontario Society of Artists”, Toronto, from 14 May 1879, no. 24 as “Point au Pic, Murray Bay”
Possibly “Canadian Academy of Arts First Annual Exhibition”, Ottawa, 8 – 19 March 1880, no. 73 as “Point au Pic, Murray Bay”
Literature
Sharon Rose Goelman, “William Raphael, R.C.A. (1833‒1914)” (M.A. thesis, Concordia University, 1978), pages 148‒150, 158
Sharon Rose Goelman, “William Raphael, R.C.A. (1833‒1914)”, Walter Kinkhoff Gallery, Montreal, 1996, reproduced page 13 as “The Last of the Wigwams”
Michel Lessard, “Québec éternelle : Promenade photographique dans l'âme d'un pays”, Montreal, 2013, pages 382‒383
Appointed a charter member of the Canadian Academy of Arts (Royal Canadian Academy of Arts from summer 1880) by the Governor General the Marquis of Lorne, in March 1880, William Raphael submitted a large painting titled “Indian Encampment on the Lower Saint Lawrence” as his Diploma Work, the prerequisite for receipt of his diploma as Academician. Further to the constitution of the newly created society, these Diploma Works were to be donated to the National Gallery in Ottawa. That no such institution existed seems
not to have disturbed the Governor General, for on receipt of the Academicians’ donations, a National Gallery was created and two years later found a temporary home.
“Indian Encampment on the Lower Saint Lawrence” (National Gallery of Canada) depicts a night scene on the shores of the Saint Lawrence below Pointe‒au‒Pic near Murray Bay, a popular, summer tourist destination. Moonlight illuminates the river and a search light at the end of the quai. A wooden house can be seen at the top of the cliff, light shining dimly from its windows. Two figures land a boat lower right while a man collects kindling on the stony beach before three tents. A hot fire is seen burning in the bark‒covered tent at the left. While the varying light sources are a principal theme, the painting also speaks of the interaction of cultures at Pointe‒au‒Pic where tourism, commerce and Indigenous cultures met. A photograph published by Michel Lessard, taken by the Quebec City photographer Jules‒Ernest Livernois on the beach at Pointe‒au‒Pic shows tourists admiring and purchasing baskets woven by the woman seated in the foreground. Behind are birchbark covered huts with stove pipes emerging from the roofs.
William Raphael‘s painting of three bark covered tents, two pointed teepees with smoke emerging from the smoke holes, one lower with a flatter peak, are reprised in “Indian Encampment on the Lower Saint Lawrence”, having first appeared in the canvas being offered here dating from 1871. On the beach below the cliff at Pointe‒au‒Pic, a man wearing a yellow shirt with an embroidered collar, his pipe in hand, spoon on the ground, sits at the entrance of the left tent, his gun leaning by his side. and a pot is heated over an open fire. Two women and a child, their dresses creating vibrant accents of pink, yellow, green and mauve, are busy with baskets in front of the middle tent. A canoe sits on the rocks before a view of the river and distant hills.
An undated painting currently titled “Three Montagnais with Wigwams, La Malbaie” in the McCord-Stewart Museum is almost identical in composition and of similar proportions. Raphael repeats the patterning of light and dark barks on the tents though the colouring is more muted and less sharp and no smoke emerges from the smoke holes.
The three tents with the same patterning of light and dark barks appear in two variant compositions, an undated work given the title “The Last of the Wigwams”, and in a painting dated 1876 (sold Sotheby’s, Toronto, 27 November 2012, lot 166). In the latter a white shirted figure is the principal accent, two canoes are pulled up on the beach and there is a more expansive view of the landscape beyond.
This brilliant canvas of 1871 is a key work in a new genre in the work of the Montreal artist William Raphael and the precursor of his Diploma Work in the National Gallery of Canada.
We extend our thanks to Charles Hill, Canadian art historian, former Curator of Canadian Art at the National Gallery of Canada and author of “The Group of Seven‒Art for a Nation”, for his assistance in researching this artwork and for contributing the preceding essay.
