Raphael Soyer, painter, lithographer, and teacher, was born on December 15, 1899, in Borisoglebsk, Tombov, Russia. The Soyer family moved to New York 1912, settling in the Bronx. Raphael's twin brother, Moses, and their brother, Isaac, were also artists. His formal studies were at Cooper Union, the National Academy of Design, and the Art Students League. Raphael's first solo exhibition was in 1929.

He was a member of the National Academy of Design, American Academy of Arts and Letters, American Society of Painters, Sculptors and Gravers, Artists Congress, and the National Institute of Arts and Letters. Soyer taught at the Art Students League in New York.  Working in oil or lithography, he was an American Scene artist who championed realism and his work portrays the daily life of New Yorkers.

Soyer's works are in the collections of the Phillips Collection, the Corcoran Gallery of Art, the Metropolitan Museum, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the New York Public Library, the Fogg Art Museum at Harvard, the Asheville Art Museum, the Princeton University Art Museum, the Brooklyn Museum, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

Raphael Soyer died in New York on November 4, 1987.