Art Attic #6: Rachel Ruysch and Other Dutch Masters
- The Hare and the Pear
- Jun 3
- 4 min read
Emergency surgery upended my plans to visit the Chicago Institute of Art for my birthday earlier this year. Instead, my husband and I took a day off recently to drive to Toledo to walk through their art museum. Unbeknownst to either of us, they were featuring an exhibition of Rachel Ruysch.
I didn't know the name either (insert grumbling about women's contributions to art being erased), but I knew the work. Rachel Ruysch was one of the famous Dutch Masters of still lifes. I had actually been trying to find her work without her name just a few weeks ago. These stunning floral pieces have lived in my head rent free for decades.
Rachel Ruysch was born in 1664. Her father was an amateur painter, but perhaps his biggest contribution to her later success was that he was a professor of botany. The house of her childhood was packed with reference books and a greenhouse of exotic flowers. Clearly talented from a young age, she trained under Willem van Aelst. By the time Ruysch was eighteen, she was working full time as a professional painter. She went on to receive great acclaim for her work in her lifetime, even attracting the patronage of royalty. By the time of her death at the age of 86, she was considered one of, if not the most skilled masters of still lifes.
Why do I love these pieces:
The bold contrast. The dark almost foreboding backgrounds make the bold and delicate flowers pop. It reminds me of the femme fatal in mourning black with a slash of red on her lips. These floral paintings, unsurprisingly, contain a lot of lipstick shades.
The decay. Life and death are both present in many Dutch still lifes of the 1600-1700s. This subgenre of memento mori was such a popular motif, that these types of paintings had a specific name: vanitas. They often include flowers both fresh and wilted or sweet fruits flecked with bugs. Some more explicit vanitas included a skull or hourglass. They are a spectrum of time. Ruysch’s work isn't as explicit in this theme as some others, but it's there if you know to look.
The movement. Twisted leaves. Stems bending back on themselves. Petals that look like they opened with an explosion. Nothing in these still lifes looks still. Are you familiar with the reddit Accidental Renaissance? In the photos, people are crowded together and bent at all angles. The light is often stark, pulling the eye to a certain point. No one looks at rest. That's these bouquets. These flowers emit an energy like they have places to be, lovers to woo, stars to seek. They aren't here for you. They have their own agenda.
Seeing so many of these works together in one place brought a few things to my attention.
The references are clear. I pointed out a lizard to my husband. It was the same lizard in two different paintings. This told me that Ruysch was copying it from one reference. Sure enough, when we turned the corner, the museum had old botanical and naturalist books on display as well as collections of butterflies and beetles. There's even a painting of her in her painting process.
Obviously, not everything was from a book. The Netherlands was and is famous for its tulips. In Ruysch's lifetime, tulips, especially the striped, ruffled variety she painted so often, could be insanely expensive. Those and other flowers were possibly studied at a garden while still uncut. One expensive tulip sketched from several angles could easily become three different tulips in a painting. Art magic. It was a good reminder for me to take my wildlife reference photos from many angles.
Let artistic chaos win, at least a little bit. I often describe different art mediums as chaos mediums or control mediums. Pencils and charcoal are control mediums. Resin is a chaos medium. (At least the way I do it. More on that in a few weeks.) Watercolor can be a control medium, but it can also smell fear, so be careful. After pencils, oils might be the controliest of mediums. The slow dry times allow for endless blending and fretting and perfecting. So what is so chaotic about realistic oil paintings of flowers, fruit and bugs? These are fantasy bouquets, a mix of flowers from different seasons and different origins. Animals and insects mingle that never would have crossed paths in life. Most importantly, I never thought there were too many flowers in the vase or that the origin of the stems didn't make sense, but these are silly rules that I hold my own art to. Stop. Overthinking. Flowers. Nature is wild and free. Let nature art be, too.
Rachel Ruysch: Nature Into Art will be showing at the Toledo Museum of Art through July 27.
Other Dutch still life painters:
Anna Ruysch, Rachel's sister
Jan Davidsz de Heem
Jan van Huysum
Otto Marseus van Schrieck
Maria van Oosterwijck
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