[5] In 1958, he won a Fulbright fellowship to study for two years in Florence and Rome, and began painting complexly colored watercolors of flower forms.

He mounted his first New York City exhibition of his Umbrian watercolors in 1963, at the d’Arcy Galleries, while at the same time battling hepatitis from which he almost died; when he recovered, he shifted to "real life" images based on photographs.

[5] In 1973 Time Magazine published an article by Robert Hughes A Slice of the River[dead link‍], describing his water paintings.

[6] Hughes stated that the artist’s color-drenched canvases display “a tender virtuosity without parallel in other American figurative painting today.”[6] In 2018, Raffael collaborated with David Pagel to produce Talking Beauty: A Conversation Between Joseph Raffael and David Pagel about Art, Love, Death, and Creativity.

Moving Toward the Light: Joseph Raffael (ACC Editions, 2015); ISBN 978-1851498055 Wallach, Amei; Kuspit, Donald.