‘Our Sublime Art Heroine’ — Rachel Ruysch

Remembering the accomplished court painter who preserved the transient beauty of nature for us to savour

*‘Fruit and Insects’ (1711) by Rachel Ruysch, oil on wood, 44 x 60 cm, Uffizi Gallery, Florence [public domain image] **

This exquisitely painted, seemingly realistic scene is a fabrication. It presents a mixture of fruit from different locations and seasons, complemented with equally exotic fauna — bird eggs, insects, a lizard… There are peaches captured at their perfect ripeness, plums, an impressive marrow and a corn on the cob. It also includes grapes and ears of wheat, signs of a good harvest and symbols of the eucharist representing the blood and body of Christ. The painting’s exuberance seeks to embrace a microcosm of the natural world — where butterflies must avoid falling prey to reptiles, and birds’ eggs symbolise the cycle of life, even while withered leaves surrounding the corncob remind us how quickly this cycle moves.

It was created for Cosimo Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany, by a woman who lived 350 years ago, and its vivacity still appeals to our senses. How did this artist’s prodigious skill develop, and how did it inspire many others? To answer that question, one needs some context to understand the life and times of Rachel Ruysch, who was so famous in her day that the Dutch called her ‘our sublime art heroine’…

‘Still Life with Flowers in a Terracotta vase, and Fruit, on a Stone Parapet’ (1700) by Rachel Ruysch, oil on wood 99cm x 83cm, Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge [view license]

Rachel Ruysch was born in 1664 in the Netherlands, into a talented and enlightened family. Her maternal grandfather was a famous architect, and her father was a renowned anatomist and botanist. The Netherlands had only recently won their freedom from the rule of the Holy Roman Empire in 1648 and had entered a prosperous period of global trade with its independence, enhanced by their discovery of the ‘New Worlds’ of the Americas and Australasia. The newly wealthy merchant class wanted paintings that reflected their lives — still lifes, landscapes, and portraits — to decorate their homes. Still life compositions were designed to promote and celebrate the ephemeral luxuries they could now afford — including flowers and fruit, the best that the new Dutch trade and horticulture could offer.

Within this world, one could imagine the young Rachel beginning to draw and paint in the botanical gardens at Amsterdam and from the amazing specimens her father collected, as well as those he preserved for his cabinet of curiosities. Ruysch helped her father with his techniques and, of course, drew and painted both seasonal blooms from the botanical gardens and his preserved botanical specimens, available year-round for her to study and paint at her leisure, thus developing her observational skills.

Her father encouraged her talent, and she was apprenticed at 15 to Willem van Aelst, who was known for his flower compositions. He taught her to be looser and more daring in arranging bouquets and inspired confidence for her to develop her own techniques. She also learned from his friend Otto Marseus van Schrieck, who painted in a Sottobosco (Italian for ‘undergrowth’) style. He painted what were known as ‘forest floor’ compositions, which Ruysch adapted in some of her paintings and, under his influence, she explored texture by applying paint with a sponge, and with moss or, sometimes, even the wings of a butterfly.

two ‘Forest Floor’ still lifes by Rachel Ruysch: ‘Flowers, Butterflies and a Lizard in a Dell’ (c.1700) and ‘Flowers Arranged on a Tree Trunk’ (c.1700+) [view license 1 and 2 ]

She depicted new arrivals, such as corn on the cob imported from the Americas, and drew the Suriname toad, famous for carrying its young on its back until they hatch. In this, she was influenced by fellow painter Maria Sybilla Merian (1647–1717), who had financed a trip to Suriname herself and accurately depicted her discoveries on her return. Ruysch did not travel to the New World, and as a woman, the still life genre of flower painting was the most accessible to her as it could be conducted at home within domestic duties. Nevertheless, the verve and beauty of her arrangements of flora and fauna were executed with meticulous attention to detail, demonstrating scientific accuracy and making her attractive, fantastical creations ‘super real’. Instagram-ready images for her era!

Ruysch also took advantage of the opportunity to paint the best botanical blooms that the Dutch horticultural industry could offer — which of course included the striped tulip which she painted often — a single bloom is depicted at the apex of the floral bouquet shown below. The original striped blooms, also known as ‘Broken Tulips’, were the result of an aphid-born virus. It was their rare and striking uniqueness that sparked the national obsession for tulips, creating the futures market and the first ‘financial bubble’ that had already collapsed in 1637.

*‘Flowers in a Glass Vase With a Tulip’ (1716) by Rachel Ruysch, oil on canvas, 46.5 × 36 cm, National Gallery, London [public domain image] **

She often used an open diagonal in her compositions. She placed the largest, brightest blooms at the centre of the painting, balancing colour and form to create exciting, pleasing bouquets that seemed so realistic one could almost reach out to touch them. The blooms are vivid and show a light, playful tone that verges on Rococo style as they spill out of the painting. However, the dark surrounding background, which spotlighted her bouquets, is a Baroque technique employed by earlier painters such as ‘Flower’ Breughel (Jan Brueghel the Elder, 1568–1625). She always included some less-than-perfect touches such as brown shrivelled leaves, fallen petals, bruised fruits, that served as a ‘vanitas’ — a reminder that this too will pass, and eternal beauty is the province of heaven.

Ruysch married Juriaen Pool, a portrait painter. Still, he recognised her superior talent, and she continued to work after her marriage, which was unusual at that time (even her sister Anna, who also painted botanical still life, stopped painting after she was married). Rachel continued to command high prices for her work and remained productive despite having ten children! She earned more money than her husband for her paintings, several times more than Rembrandt (her contemporary) did during his lifetime, and could support her family with her art.

She was unusual in that she gained recognition in her lifetime. For example, she was the first woman granted admission to the Painter’s Guild of The Hague in 1701, and she was appointed court painter to Willem, Elector Palatine, in 1708, apparently working between Amsterdam and his court in Düsseldorf. She did stop painting for a while when the family won the lottery, which gave them financial independence, but her enjoyment and talent meant she continued to paint after this break. Perhaps her painting also provided solace when many of her children died in adolescence and young adulthood. She created over 250 paintings in her long life and recorded her age on her last known painting as 83. She died at 86 in 1750 and bequeathed a precious painting to each of her daughters as part of their inheritance.

*‘Still Life with Fruit and Flowers’ (1714) by Rachel Ruysch [public domain image] **

After her death, she fell from prominence — which often seems to be the case with women artists. The fact that she had concentrated on still life, often seen as a lesser genre, may have contributed to her being overlooked by art histories. However, the vivacious quality and super realism of her paintings made them stand out, and they continued to be held in high regard. Her works were held as the standard of excellence in botanical art, elevating the genre's prestige and raising the bar for future painters. Her legacy is evident in the work of the Pre-Raphaelites in nineteenth-century Britain, as many of their paintings included accurate botanical flora, although from different seasons, adding a super-realistic quality to their work. The Death of Ophelia (1851) by John Everett Millais is one such example. Contemporary artists such as Marc Quinn, who has created his own floral installations and paintings that mix blooms from different locations and seasons, and Sam Taylor Wood’s time-lapse film of a still life in decay also seem inspired by Ruysch’s approach to her still-life compositions.

A lost Ruysch painting was rediscovered in an old Normandy farmhouse in 1999, and this fetched a high price — almost half a million dollars — at auction. Her work is now in collections such as the Rijksmuseum and the National Gallery UK, and the first exhibition devoted entirely to her work was held as recently as 2025, *Rachel Ruysch Nature into Art*, at the Toledo Museum of Art.

* All images are used with license, are promotional material, or presented here for educational purposes under fair usage policy.