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Rachel Ruysch (June 3, 1664 - August 12, 1750)
Rachel Ruysch
(June 3, 1664 - August 12, 1750) |
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Floral Still-Life Art Work
| Name: |
Rachel Ruysch |
| Gender: |
Female |
| Place of Birth: |
Amsterdam, Netherlands |
| Nationality: |
Dutch |
| Birth: |
June 3, 1664 |
| Death: |
August 12, 1750 |
| Website: |
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| Past Auctions: |
Click Here |
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Quick Facts
| Known For: |
Floral Still-Life |
| Medium: |
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| Method: |
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| Style: |
Dutch Golden Age |
| Fine Art Profession(s): |
Painting
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Biography
Rachel Ruysch's career as a successful artist lasted over sixty-five years. She was the last major exponent of Dutch still-life painting, rivaled as a flower painter only by |an van Huysum. Her pictures were already greatly sought-after and fetched high prices during her lifetime, and their desirability increased by the fact that only a few left her studio every year. Today there are paintings by her in most of the world's major museums. Ruysch remained true to her chosen subject matter throughout her career, creating ever-new variations on flower and fruit still lifes of an unparalleled richness and luminosity. Ruysch's patrons valued the decorative character of her still lifes as much as their naturalistic precision.
Ruysch was an exception to the rule that most women who embraced an artistic career were able to do so because their fathers were painters. She grew up in a cosmopolitan Amsterdam household in which science loomed large. Her father, Frederik Ruysch, a respected botanist and professor of anatomy, no doubt awakened his daughter's interest in the world of flora and fauna early in life. He fostered her artistic talent, paying for her to receive instruction from the well-known still-life painter Willem van Aelst at the age of fifteen. No other studio in Amsterdam could have provided better training. Here, Ruysch learned an excellent painting technique and became acquainted with the latest developments in still-life painting. Van Aelst distributed the objects in his flower and hunting pieces asymmetrically on the picture plane, generating a sense of drama that contrasted with the more regular arrangements characteristic of painters of the older generation. Ruysch adopted her teacher's style of composition.
For the flower piece reproduced here Ruysch chose a relatively small number of items: sumptuous white and pink roses, an exquisite pale violet iris, a carnation with flamelike markings, wild flowers such as a red poppy and a blue field bindweed, and an ear of corn. Like all professional still-life painters, she did not paint such a collection of objects from nature but drew on her store of individual studies. At first sight, the arrangement may seem rather haphazard, but still lifes like this were carefully composed down to the last detail. The viewer's eye is drawn to the full, light-colored roses in the centre; stems spread outwards from here in a series of S-shaped curves, some extending as far as the edge of the picture. The artist makes skilful use of contrast, setting off dense against loose areas, broad leaves against thin stalks, cold colors against warm. The colored flowers emerge from the dark background like actors making their entrance on a stage, with light used subtly to create a strong three-dimensional quality.
When she painted this picture, in 1698, the artist was thirty-four years old and had been married to the painter Juriaen Pool for five years. She had given birth to her first child three years previously; nine further children followed, but she did not reduce her artistic activity as a result. Ruysch's career reached its climax in 1708, when she was made court painter in Dusseldorf by Johann Wilhelm, the Elector Palatine. She painted her last picture, a flower piece now in the Musee des Beaux-Arts. Lille, in 1747 at the age of eighty-three.
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Samples of Work
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