Artista lunii decembrie 2022

Rachel Ruysch (3 June 1664 - 12 October 1750) was a Dutch still-life painter from the Northern Netherlands. She specialized in flowers, inventing her own style and achieving international fame in her lifetime. Due to a long and successful career that spanned over six decades, she became the best-documented woman painter of the Dutch Golden Age.

Rachel Ruysch was born on 3 June 1664 in The Hague to the scientist Frederik Ruysch and Maria Post, the daughter of the architect Pieter Post. Her father was also a professor of anatomy and botany and an amateur painter. He had a vast collection of animal skeletons, and mineral and botany samples which Rachel used to practice her drawing skills. At a young age, she began to paint the flowers and insects from her father's collection in the popular manner of Otto Marseus van Schreck.

Ruysch had a very good understanding of drawing and the techniques of earlier traditions. Stylistically, her artwork, with its playful composition and brilliant colors, was part of the rococo movement. She paid extensive attention to all details in her work: background and S shape.

The symbolism of each flower was elaborately developed in the 17th century, but most of this concerned the introduction of a single flower into a Vanitas piece. Apart from Jan van Huysum, no 18th-century flower painter matched the skill of Rachel Ruysch.

Rᴇғᴇʀᴇɴᴄᴇs:

• Chadwick, Whitney (1990). Women, Art, and Society (1st ed.). New York, NY: Thames and Hudson. p. 138

• Sterling, Susan Fisher; Heller, Nancy G. (18 November 2000). Women artists: works from the National Museum of Women in the Arts. p. 35

• Renraw, R. (1933). "Art of Rachel Ruysch". The Connoisseur. Art Index Retrospective. 92 (388): 397-99.

• Vigué, Jordi (2002). Great Women Masters of Art. New York: Watson-Guptill, p. 129

Current Location: National Gallery, From Private collection. On loan from the collection of Janice and Brian Capstick. 

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