Where Art Meets Science: the Still Lifes of Rachel Ruysch
An introduction to Rachel Ruysch, the star flower painter of the Dutch Golden Age.
Flower Still Life (1716-1720) might initially appear to be a simple bouquet. But look closer, and Rachel Ruysch’s painting brims with life. Amidst the delicately-rendered roses and other colorful blooms, one will spot a beetle crawling on a stem, a butterfly perched in the bottom-left corner, a bumble-bee collecting pollen. It is the kind of unique, detailed composition that made Ruysch a star of the Dutch art market. Her works commanded even higher prices than Rembrandt.
Ruysch lived from 1664 to 1750, a time when the Dutch colonial empire reached staggering heights of power, and a growing middle class was hungry to purchase beautiful works of art. Ruysch was the era’s beloved still life artist, earning a fortune through her work and serving as the court painter to Johann Wilhelm, Elector Palatine until the prince’s death.
Despite her fame, she posthumously suffered the fate of many female artists: academics left her out of the history books. But the times have changed, and thanks to the increasing attention on Ruysch’s work, we can examine how her paintings illuminate the wealth of the Dutch empire and the impact of the Scientific Revolution on the arts.
In 1956, the Toledo Museum of Art in Ohio bought Flower Still Life. In doing so, it became the first North American museum to own a work by Rachel Ruysch. This year, they are hosting Ruysch’s very first solo exhibition, “Rachel Ruysch: Nature Into Art,” from April 12 through July 27. (The exhibition was at the Alte Pinakothek, Munich this past winter, and it will move to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston in the autumn.)
“Nature Into Art” highlights the role that scientific discoveries played in Ruysch’s art. Whether in botanical studies or the small animals that accompany her scenes, Ruysch paints with painstaking accuracy. (In this video, curator Robert Schindler visits the University of Michigan’s vast herbarium to view species found in Ruysch’s art.)
Ruysch was certainly in the right place. The Dutch empire peaked in its power and reach during the 17th century, and the traders of the Dutch East India Company brought spices, raw materials, and new plant species back to the Netherlands. (The wild speculative bubble of the 1630s known as Tulip Mania demonstrates this desire for new blooms; tulips were likely introduced to Europeans through the Ottoman Empire.) By the 1680s, the city of Amsterdam was investing more money into its botanical garden—a decision that came to the great benefit of Ruysch’s father, and the artist herself.
For Rachel Ruysch’s passion for botany was homegrown. Her father, Dr. Frederick Ruysch, was a prominent surgeon and the chief anatomist of the Amsterdam Guild of Surgeons. He pioneered superior embalming and preservation techniques, and as his interests shifted toward botany and zoology, he applied his knowledge of embalming to those disciplines.1 Dr. Ruysch was named supervisor of the Amsterdam Botanical Garden in 1685; with an influx of funds for the organization, he transformed it into a great center of botanical research. Within a few years, his daughter Rachel began incorporating species from overseas into her work. She was one of the earliest Western artists to paint cacti (see A Still Life with Devil’s Trumpet above).
From a young age, Rachel Ruysch would access her father’s vast collection of animal skeletons and plant samples to improve her drawing skills. At fifteen, she secured her first apprenticeship with the flower painter Willem van Aelst. By eighteen, she was a working professional.
In many ways, the choice of still lifes was practical for a female artist. As we explored in my essay on Rosa Bonheur, a prominent obstacle for women in the arts prior to the 20th century was lack of educational opportunities. With rare exceptions, women were not allowed to attend live drawing sessions with nude models, which greatly hindered their ability to paint anatomically-accurate people. As a result, women were more likely to paint still lifes and landscapes.
However, Ruysch’s passion for botany was sincere, and her skill widely recognized and lauded. She benefited from living in a period in which the Dutch bourgeoisie sought smaller works that could be displayed in their homes. As an overwhelmingly-Protestant country, the Dutch Republic lacked a market for religious art, and domestic scenes grew popular for middle-class buyers.
During Ruysch’s lifetime, most female Dutch artists fell into the category of amateurs: typically wealthy men and women who took up painting as a socially-acceptable hobby, but not as a profession. In families of professional artists, women might be trained by their fathers to assist in the workshop, and in some cases, become professional painters themselves. In rarer cases, such as with Judith Leyster, a woman who did not come from an artistic family but possessed professional ambitions might secure an apprenticeship. Even still, the expectation was that a middle-class woman would abandon professional pursuits after marriage.2
Ruysch married a fellow painter, Juriaen Pool, in 1693, with whom she had ten children. (Three made it to adulthood.) But she never stopped painting, and she produced over 250 works throughout the course of her life.
Ruysch had the habit of including her age with her signature upon completing a project, so we know that she continued painting at least through the age of 83. One can envision her at her easel, six decades into her career, a smile spreading across her face as she notes her age on the canvas. I imagine she did so with great pride.
Related essays from The Crossroads Gazette:
Julie V. Hansen, “Resurrecting Death: Anatomical Art in the Cabinet of Dr. Frederik Ruysch,” The Art Bulletin 78, no. 4 (1996): 663–79. https://doi.org/10.2307/3046214.
Elizabeth Alice Honig, “The Art of Being ‘Artistic’: Dutch Women’s Creative Practices in the 17th Century,” Woman’s Art Journal 22, no. 2 (2001): 31–39. https://doi.org/10.2307/1358900.
Lovely article, Nicole. This is an artist I'm not familiar with. This is the perfect springboard to discover more about her. Thanks!
As always, a really brilliant article Nicole.
Rachel Ruyche's still life works are always the ones that seem to leap out at me whenever I see them in a gallery setting. (even in rooms where they are surrounded by dozens of other flower painters of the day) And I love that little detail about her often including her age with a signature. Will 100% be looking out for that now next time I see any of her work!