Throwing the Bait, River St. Charles, Quebec, 1895

Dr. M.J. Raff, Montreal Linda Raff International Auction Gallery, California, 2018, lot 181 Galerie Cazeault, Montreal Acquired by the present Private Collection, 2020

Sharon Rose Goelman, “William Raphael, R.C.A. (1833-1914)” (M.A. thesis, Concordia University, 1978) pages, 155, 159, 344 no. 82 as “Fishing from the Red Canoe”

Arriving in Montreal from Prussia in 1857, William Raphael had a long and diverse career. A painter of portraits, still lifes, landscapes and genre scenes, it is the latter that appears to have retained his continuing interest as seen in his paintings of street life around Montreal’s Bonsecours Market from the 1860s, his studies of Canadian “characters” and this painting of two people in a canoe on the Saint Charles River near Quebec City. Wearing a mauve dress and white straw hat decorated with mauve ribbons, the young woman somewhat tentatively casts her line into the still waters of the river. The reflections of the two figures animate the greens and yellows of the grasses and water lilies that complement the red canoe. The large rocks by the water’s edge, the dense foliage and hills glimpsed at the right give evidence of Raphael’s talents as a landscape painter, but it is the two figures that are the centre piece of this painting. Seated on a backed seat, she is the principal actor while he lounges back, smoking a cigarette and reading the newspaper. “Throwing the Bait” is a variant of a canvas dated 1892 and titled “With the Current” in the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. The greatest differences between the two paintings are to be found in their respective landscapes. In the 1892 canvas the boulders are more prominent and the trunk of a willow tree is seen behind the male figure. In Throwing the Bait the landscape is more open revealing sky and distant hills. Landscape and figures evoke all the calm of a summer day vacation. 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.