Ruysch, Rachel

▪ Dutch painter

baptized June 3, 1664, Amsterdam, Neth.

died Aug. 12, 1750, Amsterdam

      Dutch painter who specialized in richly detailed still-life paintings that commanded high prices.

      Ruysch's maternal grandfather was the architect Pieter Post (Post, Pieter). Her father, a professor of anatomy and botany and an amateur painter, probably introduced her to the study of exotic flowers. Beginning at age 15, she studied with the still-life specialist Willem van Aelst. Those who bought her paintings were members of the wealthy bourgeoisie in the Netherlands. After marrying the portrait painter Juriaen Pool in 1693, Ruysch moved with him to The Hague, where they both joined the Guild of St. Luke—a professional artists' organization that regulated the sales and promotion of artwork in the city—and continued their work for the elector Palatine, Johann Wilhelm von der Pfalz. While Ruysch's career flourished, she also bore 10 children.

      In 1716 Johann Wilhelm sent to Cosimo III, the grand duke of Tuscany, Ruysch's Still-life with Fruit, Flowers, and Insects (1711), which has hung in the Uffizi Gallery, in Florence, since 1753. The painting shows her great skill, which is evident not only in her superb, precise, and accurate technique but also in her brilliant combination of objects in an out-of-doors setting—flowers, grapes and other fruit, a bird's nest with eggs, and lizards and insects—that demonstrates the richness of nature and its exotic variety. Throughout her long life (she died at 86) and well beyond it, she maintained a solid reputation as a still-life painter with an unusual flair for the dramatic underlaid by a solid understanding of botanical and zoological specimens.

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