MAUFILS, MARIE-MADELEINE, dite de Saint-Louis, Religious Hospitaller at the Hôtel-Dieu of Quebec; baptized 21 Dec. 1671 at Sainte-Anne de Beaupré, daughter of Pierre Maufils and Madeleine Poulain; buried 5 Dec. 1702.

She joined the Religious Hospitallers of Quebec in 1687. In the Annales de l’Hôtel-Dieu de Québec it is said of her that she “had much wit, humour, skill, and was extraordinarily expert in all sorts of learning. She had been taught to paint.” The annalist affirms that “there are still some landscapes in the house which are her work; her death prevented her from finishing several that she had sketched out.” Gérard Morisset believes that it was she who painted some panels in the chapel of the Hôpital Général in Quebec. In Painting in Canada: a history, J. R. Harper remarks: “While artistically of no great importance, Mother Maufils . . . deserve[s] mention for the secular notes introduced into [her] subject-matter.”

Marie-Madeleine Maufils died a victim to her devotion, at the time of a smallpox epidemic which filled the Hôtel-Dieu of Quebec with patients during the winter of 1702–3.

Hélène Bernier