Rachel Ruysch
The star of flower painting.
Rachel Ruysch painted flower still lifes for more than sixty years and was one of the best-paid painters of her time. Her father was an anatomist and botanist.
Rachel Ruysch was born in The Hague in 1664 and grew up in Amsterdam. Her father, Frederik Ruysch, was a famous professor of anatomy and botany. He had a large collection of preserved natural specimens, which was later bought by the Russian tsar Peter the Great. Rachel thus grew up surrounded by plants, insects and scientific observation. Her maternal grandfather was the architect Pieter Post.
At fifteen she was apprenticed to the flower painter Willem van Aelst in Amsterdam. There she learned to build up a bouquet asymmetrically, in a soft S-shaped movement, instead of the older, stiffer arrangement. She quickly became known for her flower still lifes, in which every flower, leaf and insect is rendered with great precision against a dark background. The bouquets often contain flowers that bloom at different times of year and could never have stood in the same vase. They are thus assembled from studies, not painted directly from a real bouquet.
In 1693 she married the portrait painter Juriaen Pool. They had ten children, yet she continued to paint throughout her life. In 1701 both she and her husband became members of the artists' society in The Hague. Between 1708 and 1716 she was court painter to the Elector Johann Wilhelm of the Palatinate in Düsseldorf. Her paintings commanded very high prices, and she was among the best-paid painters of her time.
She painted slowly and carefully, so her output was relatively small. She was active for more than sixty years and sometimes gave her age in the signature of her late works, proud of her stamina. She died in Amsterdam in 1750, aged 86.
After her death she was overshadowed by the male painters of the Golden Age, but in recent decades she has received renewed attention, not least through major exhibitions. Her combination of art and natural science makes her one of the foremost flower painters in history.