Rachel Ruysch

Rachel Ruysch studied with Willem van Aelst

Rachel Ruysch was born in The Hague on 3 June 1664. The daughter of the Dutch anatomist and botanist Frederik Ruysch (1638-1731), she moved to Amsterdam at the age of three with her parents and her younger sister Anna Ruysch (1666-1754), where her father taught surgeons as a famous professor and praelector anatomiae, and performed public anatomical cadaver dissections. She obtained her initial knowledge of painting, botany and anatomy from her father, and found a wide range of illustrative material in his extensive collection of curios. The Russian Tsar Peter the Great (1672-1725) later acquired the majority of this collection for the St Petersburg Kunstkammer. Rachel Ruysch showed such great talent in her early attempts at painting that she was apprenticed to the still life painter Wilhelm van Aelst (1627 - after 1683) at the age of 15, probably together with her younger sister Anna, who was also artistically inclined and painted still lifes.

The first female member of the Lukas Guild in The Hague

At the beginning of her artistic career, Rachel Ruysch painted insects and reptiles, which she was familiar with from her father, as well as the classic still life motifs of flowers and fruit. Botanical and zoological interests seem to have gone hand in hand for Rachel Ruysch, as small animals such as dragonflies and butterflies repeatedly enliven the static flower arrangements in her paintings, painting strictly according to the model of nature. In 1696, she married the portrait painter Juriaen Pool (1665-1745), although as an artist he was overshadowed by his wife. The couple had ten children, all of whom Rachel Ruysch raised herself, although only six of them reached adulthood, which was not unusual at a time of high infant mortality. Together with her husband, she was the first woman to become a member of the painters' guild in The Hague in 1701.

Court painter to Prince Elector Johann Wilhelm

Rachel Ruysch's paintings also inspired Prince Elector Johann Wilhelm von der Pfalz (1658-1716), who employed the artist as a court painter in Düsseldorf from 1708 to 1716. With the exception of two longer visits to her patron in 1710 and 1713, Rachel Ruysch never left her hometown of Amsterdam and her family; however, at least half of the bouquets she painted each year went to the Elector on the Rhine, who also became godparent to one of the painter's sons and dedicated two of her paintings to his brother-in-law Cosimo III de' Medici (1642-1723). It was not unusual for the artist to spend several months painting her still lifes with great care and perfect craftsmanship, which is why she rarely completed more than two paintings a year, although she received large sums of money for them. In 1723, the 59-year-old artist also won the grand prize of 75,000 guilders in the Dutch state lottery.

Rachel Ruysch died in Amsterdam on 12 August 1750.