Rachel Ruysch

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Portrait of Rachel Ruysch, Godfried Schalcken before 1706

Rachel Ruysch, also Rachel Ruysch (* 3. June 1664 in The Hague ; † 12. August 1750 in Amsterdam ) was a Dutch still-life painter of the Baroque .

Life

Rachel Ruysch was born in The Hague and moved to Amsterdam with her parents when she was three years old. With her father Frederik Ruysch (1638–1731) she acquired her first knowledge of botany and painting. He was a highly respected professor of anatomy and botany in Amsterdam and owned a collection of curiosities , large parts of which were bought by Tsar Peter the Great for his Petersburg Kunstkammer. Rachel began studying with the flower painter Willem van Aelst at the age of 15 . At first she painted reptiles and insects as well as flowers and fruits. Rachel Ruysch married the portrait painter Juriaen Pool in 1695 , with whom she had ten children, all of whom she raised herself. Six children reached adulthood.

In 1701 she was the first woman to join the painters' guild in The Hague with her husband . The Elector Johann Wilhelm von der Pfalz hired her from 1708 to 1716 as court painter in Düsseldorf. Apart from two longer stays on the Rhine in 1710 and 1713 with her patron, Ruysch never left Amsterdam. With the court title awarded to her, Wilhelm von der Pfalz acquired exclusive rights for at least half of the annual production of her coveted bouquets. Some of the bouquets are now in the New Bayreuth Palace and in the Alte Pinakothek in Munich. Wilhelm also took over the sponsorship of one of her sons. His brother-in-law Cosimo III. de 'Medici he gave two Ruysch paintings.

Flower still life with butterflies on a stone bench (around 1700)

In 1723, at the age of 59, Ruysch won the main prize of 75,000 guilders from a state lottery in the northern Netherlands.

Because of their fame and the great painterly quality, their pictures fetched exceptionally high prices. Despite the great demand, she worked on her pictures for a long time and remained true to her demands on her art over the years. In her creative period of more than 65 years, the earliest dated picture is from 1681, the last from 1747.

Her style influenced generations of flower painters not only in the Netherlands. She was the model for Jacoba van Nickelen, daughter of Jan van Nickelen. Your flower bouquets in front of a dark background look lush. All light is concentrated on the flowers, delicate grasses set accents. Sharp light-dark contrasts, subdued brown contours and the intense interplay of cold and warm colors create a strong plasticity. Even more than her predecessors and teachers, Ruysch combines a wide variety of flowers into a rich selection. She will have benefited from the extensive botany collection of her father, who set up and cataloged the Botanikum in Amsterdam as one of the richest collections of plants. Presumably she will have made her first sketches there. Such drawings of her are shown in a picture that Michiel van Musscher painted of her. However, none of their original collections have survived.

She died in Amsterdam on August 12, 1750 at the age of 86.

Works (selection)

  • Fruits and Insects, 1711

  • Rachel Ruysch, Blu menstraus, Hamburger Kunsthalle

Auctions

  • 1825 in Nuremberg : In the foreground a landscape are various kitchen plants and herbs in a picturesque grouping.

literature

  • Erika Gemar-Költzsch: Dutch still life painters in the 17th century , Lingen 1995
  • Marianne Berardi: Science into Art. Rachel Ruysch's early development as a still-life painter , Pittsburgh 1998
  • Christina Haberlik , Ira Diana Mazzoni : 50 classics - artists, painters, sculptors and photographers . Gerstenberg, Hildesheim 2002, ISBN 978-3-8067-2532-2 , pp. 40-43
  • Christiane Weidemann, Petra Larass, Melanie Klier: 50 women artists you should know Prestel Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-7913-3957-3 , pp. 38–41

Web links

Commons : Rachel Ruysch  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ National Gallery: Flowers in the Vase (around 1685)
  2. ↑ Uffizi Gallery: Fruits and Insects (1711)
  3. ↑ Rijksmuseum: Still life with flowers on a marble table (1716)
  4. ↑ DIRECTORY OF THE v.DERSCHAUISCHE Kunstkabinett zu NÜRNBERG .... Nuremberg, at the obligated auctionator Schmidmer., 1825., 250 p., Directory of rare art collections., 1825., Google Books, online , p. 19
personal data
SURNAME Ruysch, Rachel
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Ruijsch, Rachel; van Pool, Rachel; Ruisch, Rachel
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Dutch Baroque painter
DATE OF BIRTH June 3, 1664
PLACE OF BIRTH The hague
DATE OF DEATH August 12, 1750
Place of death Amsterdam