Floral Masterworks: The Still-Life Paintings of Rachel Ruysch

By Emily Burkhart

July 28, 2024

Rachel Ruysch (1664-1750), Roses, Convolvulus, Poppies and Other Flowers in an Urn on a Stone Ledge, ca. late 1680s. Oil on canvas, 42 1/2  x 33 in. National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, DC. Photo by Lee Stalsworth. Image courtesy of the  National Museum of Women in the Arts.

Introduction

A specialist in the painting of flowers, the Dutch still-life artist Rachel Ruysch (1664-1750) developed her own style of asymmetric floral composition. Her paintings also combine a scientific eye with a keen sense of observation perfected under the influence of her anatomist and botanist father who encouraged her art. During a career spanning more than six decades, Ruysch became the most documented woman painter of the Dutch Golden Age. She painted professionally, taking commissions and signing and dating all her works. Unlike many of her female contemporaries, she did not give up painting after marriage but continued to paint even while raising ten children. Ruysch painted from the age of fifteen until she was eighty-three. She produced several hundred paintings of which more than 250 have been documented, completing her last known still life in 1747 three years prior to her death. Ruysch was the first female Dutch artist to win international recognition in her own lifetime and her paintings routinely sold for more than that of Rembrandt van Rijn (1606-1669), the leading portraitist and most famous Dutch artist of the era. Though still lifes today are often regarded as a lesser form of artistic expression, Ruysch’s reputation has not diminished. She is regarded as one of the most talented still-life artists of either sex by art historians. 

Godfried Schalcken (1643-1706), Portrait of Rachel Ruysch (1664-1750), before 1706. Oil on canvas, 28.2 x 24.4 in. The Wilson, Cheltenham, UK. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Early Life

One of twelve siblings, Rachel Ruysch was born June 3, 1664, in The Hague, Netherlands. She was surrounded by art and science her entire life. Her father, Frederik Ruysch, was a well-known physician and professor of anatomy and botany as well as an amateur painter who published both textual and graphic descriptions of botanical discoveries. With his trained scientific mind, Frederik observed and recorded nature with great accuracy, a skill he instilled in his daughter. He also collected art, notably the paintings of local artist Otto Marseus van Schrieck (ca. 1613-1678), who was known for his depictions of dark, fungi- and insect-glutted forest floors–a genre known as sottobosco (Italian for “undergrowth”) which would influence Ruysch’s later work. Her mother, Maria Post, came from a creative background as well. Her mother’s father, Pieter Post, was initially a landscape and battle scene painter before pivoting to architecture. In the 1640s, he was appointed court painter and architect for Prince Frederik Hendrik and settled in The Hague. Maria’s paternal uncle Frans Post was also an artist, specializing in landscape painting.

When Rusych was three years old, her family moved to Amsterdam, where she was primarily raised. Beginning in 1667, her father served as Amsterdam’s praelector (college officer) of anatomy and took positions as a professor of botany and supervisor of the city’s botanical garden. His reigning achievement was his famed collection of anatomical and botanical curiosities–a five-room assemblage of embalmed and wax-injected organs, animals, plants, and other oddities which he posed in artful dioramas and publicly exhibited–that Rachel used to hone her drawing skills. These early drawings were mainly studies of insects and flowers. Frederik encouraged his daughter’s artistic pursuits and cultivated her talent.

Artistic Training

Further influencing Ruysch’s vision and future direction was the family’s location in Amsterdam on Bloemgracht (the “flower canal”), an area famed for its natural beauty. She studied under the Dutch flower painter Willem Van Aelst (1627-1683) to whom she apprenticed in 1679 at the age of fourteen, a rare opportunity for a young woman at the time. Since moving there in 1657, Van Aelst had become widely recognized as Amsterdam’s premier painter of still lifes and flowers and was known for his spiraling compositions that eschewed the convention of symmetrical arrangements. Van Aelst taught Ruysch how to arrange bouquets so they would look spontaneous and less formalized, producing a more realistic and three-dimensional effect in her work. Sometimes she would use real moss to apply paint to her pictures, a method borrowed from both Van Aelst and Van Schriek, as well as butterfly wings to give her surfaces texture. Her earliest paintings began appearing around 1680 and consisted mostly of flower studies and woodland scenes. Ruysch continued as a pupil of van Aelst until his death in 1683.

Rachel Ruysch and Michiel van Musscher (1645-1705), Rachel Ruysch, 1692. Oil on canvas, 30 x 25 in. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY. Image courtesy of Hyperallergic.

By the time she was eighteen, Ruysch was producing and selling independently signed works in her own studio, as the 1692 collaborative self-portrait with Dutch artist Michiel van Musscher attests. Her prices were high enough that she only had to complete a few paintings a year. As she became more accomplished, she taught her father and younger sister Anna (1666-1754) her techniques as well. Anna Elisabeth Ruysch also became a noted still-life artist, although she never attained the stature of her older sister and stopped painting when she married at the age of twenty-one. However, because Anna rarely signed her work, only a small number of paintings can be attributed to her with certainty and just ten of her signed works survive.

Marriage and Family

Juriaen Pool (1666-1745), Portrait of the Painter Rachel Ruysch, ca. 1710-1720. Oil on canvas, 32 x 25 in. Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, The Netherlands. Image courtesy of the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen.

In 1693, at twenty-nine years of age, Ruysch married the Amsterdam portrait painter and lace dealer Juriaen Pool (1666-1745), who painted a well-known portrait of her sometime between 1710 and 1720. The couple reportedly enjoyed a happy marriage and had ten children together. Despite marital and motherly demands, Ruysch continued to paint and produce commissions for an international circle of patrons. She also continued to sign her work with her maiden name. Most women of the time were expected to participate in traditional feminine art forms, such as sewing or spinning, but Ruysch was able to carry on with her painting because her contribution to the family’s income allowed the couple to hire help to care for their children.

  Ruysch and Pool moved their young family to The Hague in 1699, where she was offered membership in the academic artists club, Confrerie Pictura, as their first female member. In 1701, both she and her husband joined the Guild of St. Luke, the city’s association of painters. Seven years later, they were invited to Düsseldorf, Germany, to serve as court painters to Duke Johann Wilhelm van der Pfalz II, the Elector Palatine of Bavaria (1658-1716), who was named godfather to Ruysch’s tenth and last child, a son, born in 1711 when she was forty-seven years old. She and Pool remained court painters until the prince’s death in 1716. They then returned to Amsterdam. With her meticulous eye for detail and composition, Ruysch’s artworks were again in great demand by the Dutch nobility.

Dutch Flower Painting

Ruysch’s career paralleled the rise of the Dutch horticultural industry and the science of botany. The Netherlands became the largest importer of new and exotic plants and flowers from around the world. Once valued primarily for their use as herbs or in medicine, flowers became appreciated for their beauty and fragrance, as prized luxuries and desirable status symbols for the wealthy. The tulip, featured in many of Ruysch’s paintings, was the most exotic having been introduced from Turkey in the late 16th century. 

During this era, art was divided into two categories: “greater” and  “lesser.” The greater art category was composed of religious and historical paintings. The lesser was still life, portrait, and landscape. These latter artistic areas were considered more appropriate for women, with women artists particularly attracted to still life. Overall, professional painting was considered a male domain and it was widely believed that women were incapable of true artistic genius. However, Ruysch stood out from her female contemporaries because of her ambition and for the realism and scientific accuracy of her work. Moreover, her diagonal compositions differed from the more compact and symmetrical arrangements most other women painters employed.

Selected Works

Roses, Convolvulus, Poppies and Other Flowers in an Urn on a Stone Ledge, ca. late 1680s 

Rachel Ruysch (1664-1750), Roses, Convolvulus, Poppies and Other Flowers in an Urn on a Stone Ledge, ca. late 1680s. Oil on canvas, 42 1/2  x 33 in. National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, DC. Photo by Lee Stalsworth. Image courtesy of the  National Museum of Women in the Arts.

One of Ruysch’s earliest floral still lifes, Roses, Convolvulus, Poppies and Other Flowers in an Urn on a Stone Ledge (ca. late 1680s) is representative of her painterly style. The architectural setting, a hallmark of her work, was a new compositional trend among flower painters in Amsterdam. The dark background and dramatic lighting were also characteristic of Baroque painting in the seventeenth century. She captured each detail of every flower, highlighting individual colors, form, and texture from the veins of the foliage (which she felt were just as important as the flowers themselves) to the faint yellow powder of pollen on the white rose. Typical of her still lifes, Ruysch included insects among the flowers, adding an entomological touch to the painting. Butterflies, a dragonfly, a small bee, and a spider were added with fine brushes after the rest of the paint had dried. Unlike other female contemporaries, Ruysch painted her flowers from all angles as evidenced by the backside of the sunflower with its curling green stem facing forward at the top of the composition and the side presentation of the poppies on the right of the canvas. The larger drooping pink rose and smaller flowers below it along with the wilted leaves on the lower left of the canvas symbolize decay. They are reminders of mortality and the fleeting nature of life, known as vanitas. 

A Still Life with Devil’s Trumpet, a Cactus, a Fig Branch, Honeysuckle and Other Flowers in a Blue Glass Vase Resting on a Ledge, ca. 1690

Rachel Ruysch (1664-1750), A Still Life with Devil's Trumpet, a Cactus, a Fig Branch, Honeysuckle and Other Flowers in a Blue Glass Vase Resting on a Ledge, ca. 1690. Oil on canvas, 18.7 x  15.7 in. Private collection. Image courtesy of Artsy.

Ruysch often introduced new flora and fauna from Dutch trading voyages into her work, as well as unusual varieties of flowers, fruits, and insects, such as she did in A Still Life with Devil’s Trumpet, a Cactus, a Fig Branch, Honeysuckle and Other Flowers in a Blue Glass Vase Resting on a Ledge (ca. 1690). In this piece, she depicted a cactus, making her one of the first Western painters to include cacti in her still lifes. She also included a ripe kiwano, or African horned melon,  a tropical fruit native to Africa, Australia, and some islands in the Pacific. A cross-section of kiwano can be seen in the bulbous, spiky orange shape with glistening red seeds at the center of the bouquet above the green fig branch and to the left of the white devil’s trumpet or jimson weed. For this work, Ruysch used a cooler palette primarily composed of gray, green, white, and blue hues with pops of yellow, orange, red, and lavender. Shadows can be seen on the ledge, cast from the flowers, leaves, and translucent glass vase, in which the stems are visible. The torn leaves and holes from insects in the foliage at the bottom of the bouquet are memento mori symbols, acting as a reminder of the inevitably of death.

Still Life with Bouquet of Flowers and Plums, 1704

Rachel Ruysch (1664-1750), Still Life with Bouquet of Flowers and Plums, 1704. Oil on canvas, 36.2 x 27.5 in. Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, Brussels. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Completed while Ruysch was working in The Hague, Still Life with Bouquet of Flowers and Plums (1704) is not as densely packed as some other pieces. The architectural setting is less defined with the bouquet resting on a wooden surface. The greenery nearly blends into the background while the blossoms form a series of S-curves instead of strong diagonals. A vase is barely discernible between the plums and trailing leaves on the ledge where a fat beige moth with eyelets on its wings perches. Other insects include a beetle on top one of the purple plums, a dragonfly eating a leaf on the lower right, a pale green and white moth on top of a small reddish primrose, and other small insects scattered throughout the bouquet. 

Feminist art historians and professors Ann Sutherland Harris and Linda Nochlin (1931-2017) included Rusych in their groundbreaking 1976 exhibition and accompanying book, Women Artists: 1550-1950, the first international exhibition of art by women artists that included eighty-three artists from twelve countries. The authors note that Still Life with Flowers and Plums is one of the best examples of Ruysch’s compositional skills and ability to suggest movement, "as if a gentle breeze were ruffling the whole arrangement."  Indeed, the blossoms do appear to sway.

Still Life of Roses, Tulips, a Sunflower and Other Flowers in a Glass Vase with a Bee, Butterfly and Other Insects Upon a Marble Ledge, 1710Rachel Ruysch (1664-1750), Still Life of Roses, Tulips, a Sunflower and Other Flowers in a Glass Vase with a Bee, Butterfly and Other Insects Upon a Marble Ledge, 1710. Oil on canvas, 35 x 27.9 in. The National Gallery, London, UK. Image courtesy of The National Gallery.

Rachel Ruysch (1664-1750), Still Life of Roses, Tulips, a Sunflower and Other Flowers in a Glass Vase with a Bee, Butterfly and Other Insects Upon a Marble Ledge, 1710. Oil on canvas, 35 x 27.9 in. The National Gallery, London, UK. Image courtesy of The National Gallery.

Still Life of Roses, Tulips, a Sunflower and Other Flowers in a Glass Vase with a Bee, Butterfly and Other Insects Upon a Marble Ledge (1710) is one of many paintings Ruysch completed while she and her husband were court painters in Düsseldorf, Germany. It is now one of three flower paintings by Ruysch in London’s National Gallery. The blooms tightly pressed together in the vase give a three-dimensional quality to the composition. In fact, a successful Dutch still life painting was highly valued for its degree of skillful realism. Interspersed among the blossoms are assorted beetles, butterflies, a dragonfly, a lady bug on the white hydrangea, a bee on the sunflower falling out of the vase, and, most prominently, a light green grasshopper with its wings extended on the marble ledge. According to Harris and Nochlin, Ruysch’s habit of depicting groups of specimens seldom seen together in the same season–beetles, butterflies, grasshoppers, and dragonflies–indicate an idealized representation. Of this trait, they suggested that Ruysch was: “in effect following the doctrine that it was the artist's duty to select from nature and to portray perfectly what nature could only render imperfectly.”

Fruit and Insects and Basket of Flowers (1711)

Rachel Ruysch (1664-1750), Fruit and Insects, 1711. Oil on wood, 17.3  x  23.6 in. Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence, Italy. Image courtesy of Smarthistory.

Two paintings from 1711, Fruit and Insects and Basket of Flowers, are both sotto bosco pieces, a sub-genre of still-life painting that emerged around 1650 in the Netherlands. Popularized by Otto Marseus van Schrieck, these works depicted fruits, plants, and flowers with small creatures on the ground in a forest-like or natural space. In Fruit and insects, Ruysch has portrayed dew-covered fruits and several creatures on a mossy, damp ground. Two red plums, a rusty pear, three white peaches, bunches of green, purple, and black grapes, an ear of yellow corn in the husk, and a green and yellow striped squash dominate the picture. In the foreground are a tan snail, a bird’s nest with several white speckled eggs upon which a fly rests, as well as a dark green striped lizard with its mouth agape looking intently at a butterfly hovering nearby. Other fauna include a forward-facing green dragonfly that nearly blends in on top of the leaves above the plums on the left, a fly that has landed on one of the white peaches, and an enormous blue and yellow stag beetle perched on top of the squash. Fruit and Insects was one of a pair of paintings commissioned by Ruysch’s patron Johann Wilhem as a gift for his father-in-law, Cosimo III de’Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany.

The other painting in the pair, Basket of Flowers, features a wicker basket filled with delicately colored flowers, many of which appear in spring such as narcissus, tulips, and peonies.The blooms overflow the tiny, woven basket Ruysch has placed them in. The flowers seem to glow with an inner light against the black background, even as their gently wilted petals and overgrown blossoms exhibit the passage of destructive time. 

Rachel Ruysch (1664-1750), Basket of Flowers, 1711. Oil on panel 18.1 x 24.4 in. Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence, Italy. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Ruysch has incorporated her usual butterfly, dragonfly, and bee motifs along with a caterpillar slithering along the stem of the dangling tulip on the lower left of the painting. Dr. Saskia Beranek has postulated that while the two paintings have some compositional similarities, they seem to reflect different seasons: the fruits and squash seem to suggest late summer into fall, while the basket of flowers suggests spring and early summer.  Further, she suggests that perhaps the two paintings were intended to be compared, to provide a chance to compare and contrast between the two seasons.

Left: Rachel Ruysch (1664-1750), Fruit and Insects, 1711. Oil on wood, 17.3  x  23.6 in. Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence, Italy. Image courtesy of Smarthistory. Right: Rachel Ruysch, Basket of Flowers, 1711. Oil on panel, 18.1 x 24.4 in. Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence, Italy. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Still Life of Flowers in a Vase with a Bird’s Nest upon a Marble Ledge, 1738.

Rachel Ruysch (1664-1750), Still Life of Flowers in a Vase with a Bird’s Nest upon a Marble Ledge, 1738. Oil on canvas, 17 ¼ x 15 ⅜ in. Image courtesy of Sotheby’s.

Created when Ruysch was seventy-four years old and had already been painting nearly sixty years, Still Life of Flowers in a Vase with a Bird’s Nest upon a Marble Ledge (1738) was discovered behind the door of a French country house in 1999. Found by an art auctioneer, the painting went on sale anonymously in Deauville, Normandy, on January 31,1999, where it sold for 2.9 million French francs, or the equivalent of $508,000. In December 2021, it was sold at Sotheby’s London for 1,346,000 British pounds or approximately $1,710,000.

With advancing age, the rate of Ruysch’s output slowed after 1720 and the size of her canvases decreased. Still Life of Flowers in a Vase with a Bird’s Nest upon a Marble Ledge, considered one of Ruysch’s most ambitious late flower pictures, is only some 17 x 15 inches yet the multi-floral bouquet consists of roses, anemones, a variegated tulip, narcissi, honeysuckle, forget-me-nots, poppies, primroses and a peony. In contrast to the dark backgrounds of her earlier works, the flowers are now set against a brighter background, a response to the lighter palette and growing color of the eighteenth century. 

This luxurious arrangement of flowers is displayed in a dark glass vase set upon a marble ledge before a stone niche, with the light falling diagonally from the left. Ruysch has incorporated twigs, feathers, and moss into the bird’s nest, containing four tan-colored eggs. To the right is a blue blowfly with its wings open; and on the opposite side of the vase, in the shadows, is a black and yellow sand wasp. On the leaf of the flower hanging over the front of the vase is a small red and black butterfly. Crawling up the stem of the center tulip, is an orange and black cylinder leaf beetle, and resting atop a large leaf above the peony to the right, is a bumblebee. The painting was included in the 1998 catalog and monograph on the works of Ruysch by Dr. Marianne Berardi, Science Into Art: Rachel Ruysch’s Early Development as a Still-Life Painter, published by the University of Michigan.

Death and Acclaim

In 1750 at the age of eighty-six, Rachel Ruysch died. She was hailed as Hollants Kunstwonder (“Holland’s art prodigy”), Onze vernuftige Kunstheldin (“Our subtle art heroine”), and the Onsterflyke Y-Minerf (“Immortal Minerva of the Amsterdam”) by her male contemporaries. Upon her death, eleven poets paid tribute to her in an anthology. Ruysch’s biographer, the contemporary painter Jan van Gool (1685–1763) described her in an interview for her biography in his Nieuwe Schouburg published in 1750 as an “Art Goddess,” “Art Heroine” and the “Amsterdam Pallas.” It is estimated that at the time of her death, Ruysch had painstakingly produced more than 250 paintings, an average of four or five  a year. Sadly, only about 100 of them are known to still exist.

 In the past thirty years, there has been renewed interest in Ruysch’s oeuvre. In January 2000, the Dutch art magazine Kunstschrift devoted an entire issue to Ruysch. Her paintings were featured in several exhibitions at the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, DC, in 1990-1991, 2011, 2015, and 2019-2020. Prominent European exhibitions including her work were “Still Life Paintings from the Netherlands 1550-1720” at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam (1999) and “Each their own Reason: Women Artists in Belgium and the Netherlands 1500-1950” at the Museum voor Moderne Kunst in Arnhem in 2000. More recently, in 2021 at the Hallwylska Museet in Stockholm, Sweden, Ruysch was included in the group exhibition “The Flowers are in Bloom Again!” also featuring the still-life painters Catharina Backer, Ambrosius Bosschaert the Elder, and Pieter Faes. With her innovative techniques, Rachel Ruysch employed a style that can be seen as a transition from 17th-century to 18th-century flower painting.