Brownstein: Montreal master Raphael’s paintings get their due, thanks to great-great-grandson

Jonathan Wener likes to joke that most people know him primarily as “a collector of buildings.” But what most don’t know about the founder/chairman of the Montreal-based, mega real-estate firm Candarel Group is that for more than 50 years he has also been collecting the artworks of a relatively unknown Canadian master, William Raphael.

Raphael — né Israel Rafalsky — just happens to be Wener’s great-great-grandfather.

Wener, 75, had long wished to give Raphael his proper due. And now he has.

On Wednesday at Le 9e, Wener will be presiding over the book launch of William Raphael: Life & Work by Pierre-Olivier Ouellet and published by the Art Canada Institute. An exquisitely assembled volume, it offers not only a stunning showcase of Raphael’s depictions of urban life in Montreal but also majestic rural landscapes set around this province. It was Wener’s perseverance that led to the book’s creation.

A self-portrait of William Raphael graces the back cover of Pierre-Olivier Ouellet’s book. John Kenney / Montreal Gazette

Born in Nakel, Prussia in 1833, Raphael grew up in a Jewish household and studied art briefly in Berlin before moving to Montreal at the age of 19.

Wener admits it was somewhat cheeky of Raphael to assume the name of the famed Renaissance artist, but his chutzpah notwithstanding, it did foreshadow his career as a creator of such a diverse body of work focused on the people and the places of his new world.

Wener concedes he knew next to nothing about Raphael while growing up.

“My parents had a few of his paintings in the house and my grandparents had quite a few more, but, honestly, I wasn’t that inquisitive until I was about 23 and my grandmother was turning 90,” recalls Wener.

“I went to the National Gallery in Ottawa, where I saw his painting from 1866, from behind the Bonsecours Market. It was prominently displayed. I was really taken by it and was suddenly able to relate it to all the paintings we had at home and at my grandparents.”

That painting had meant a lot to Wener’s grandmother, but she learned that he gave it away to become a member of the RCA (the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts). So Wener boldly asked the museum creator if it would be possible to give him a blowup of the painting for his grandmother’s 90th birthday. To his surprise, he was sent three copies: for his grandmother, for his father and for him.

“My grandmother was so blown away by it, and I’ve had my copy outside my office for the last 55 years. That kindled a real interest on my part in art altogether, but particularly in Raphael.”

Behind Bonsecours Market, an 1866 oil painting by William Raphael. Courtesy Canderel

Wener has since tracked down 166 works created by his great-great-grandfather.

He had heard his grandmother had cleared out her house before moving. She had about 100 Raphaels in her basement. Some had been spoiled through leakage and flooding. There were others Raphael didn’t want in circulation.

“But my grandmother simply gave them all away,” Wener says. “I spoke to my aunt a few days ago to verify the story. She remembers criticizing my grandmother and asking why she would do that. My grandmother simply said they had no value. So that got me irritated and I decided I had to put his whole collection together. I developed an entente with the Klinkhoff (gallery) group, having worked with three generations of the family. They’ve always been on the scour for me to locate pieces.”

Wener also took to attending art auctions to find pieces, which actually drove up prices. So he bowed out and had the Klinkhoffs do the bidding for him. He also lucked out in happening upon the convent of Les Soeurs de Sainte-Anne in Lachine, where Raphael taught art and which had about 100 of his paintings. Years later, he was given 50 of the paintings after the convent had been sold. The other half went to the Musée de Lachine.

“This mission was deeply personal,” Wener says. “I didn’t do this for anybody but for me and my family. In the latter years, it’s been a question of where do I take the next step after this book to allow a curation of his art in a spot where it will be visible to all Canadians, because it’s so part of Canadian history and very much part of Canadian Jewish history. Raphael is now being hailed as Canada’s first Jewish professional artist.

Sketchbook by Montreal artist William Raphael, dated 1860s, on display at Jonathan Wener’s home. John Kenney / Montreal Gazette

“I felt he had never been properly acknowledged other than in a thesis by Concordia University student Sharon Goelman in 1978. I felt here was an artist who was quite prolific, who lived at the same time as the great (Cornelius) Krieghoff. Yet everyone knows the Krieghoff name, but not the Raphael name.”

That now changes with the book.

“I felt it was time to celebrate him on two levels: one for his talent and his history, the other for the fact that we’re now living through a similar era to what he went through in the latter part of his career, which was a high degree of antisemitism that he suffered through. It was an interesting parallel and I felt it would be a good time to bring communities together because artwork is another type of contribution to society.”

An 1860s sketchbook belonging to William Raphael, at the home of Jonathan Wener. John Kenney / Montreal Gazette

Art historian Clarence Epstein notes that Raphael had a certain Biedermeier style owing to his brief Berlin art studies.

“But he really developed his own style here,” Epstein says. “He also did portraits, which were commissions allowing him to connect to the French and English Canadian milieu. He did genre scenes relating to French Canadian life in the countryside and he did a lot of urban industrial art plus anatomical art for William Osler. He also did religious Christian art when he would visit convents later and taught nuns. He was so diverse in his skill set.

“Because he used the name of a great Renaissance artist, there was kind of a controversy in the art world. Some thought it was a little presumptuous to use that name, but he did have a sense of humour.”

As is sadly the classic story with so many great artists, Raphael’s works, well after he passed away, were to command six-figure prices and find homes in museums, head offices and private collections around the world.

“He made a decent living while alive, but nothing like this,” Wener says.

Haymarket Square, an 1861 oil painting by William Raphael, hangs in Jonathan Wener’s living room.

He points out a Raphael painting in his living room that has particular significance to him. It’s titled Haymarket Square, painted in 1861 in what is now Victoria Square.

“Growers would arrive in their wagons to have their hay weighed at these tolls before selling,” Wener explains. “Raphael would pick up on all these fascinating urban textures, and then he would go into the province and pick up all these rural textures of people canoeing, sunbathing and swimming in lakes.

“He absolutely loved Quebec and had a fine career here until the late 1880s when he began to suffer a fair degree of antisemitism.”

Raphael was an Orthodox Jew, married to the daughter of a rabbi. Montreal’s Jewish community was rather small then, about 500 people.

“But the antisemitism he faced was brought about by other artists who were starting to establish themselves and were jealous,” Wener says. “They started discriminating against him.

“He had a very active career. He taught. He gave time to others. He flourished for a period. Then he was put asunder. But now the world will finally be able to see how much he accomplished.”

William Raphael died in 1914 at 81.

AT A GLANCE

William Raphael: Life & Work by Pierre-Olivier Ouellet ($50, 128 pages, Art Canada Institute) is available for sale at bookstores and websites. To explore the Art Canada Institute’s free digital book, visit aci-iac.ca/art-books/william-raphael.

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