Flowers in a glass vase, on a stone table

The third Fitzwilliam Ruysch, also from 1701, likely entered the Cambridge collection alongside or near to Q19287069 as a pair, reflecting the then-common practice of acquiring matched or complementary still lifes. Two paintings of similar subject and date would have hung as pendants, creating a coherent decorative programme within a collector's rooms. The stone table setting — less elaborate than the marble tabletop with balustrade that Ruysch employed in other compositions — reduces the spatial environment to its essentials: a horizontal surface, a vertical flower mass, and the implied space of the room or studio around them. This simplicity throws focus entirely onto the flowers and their rendering, making it in some ways a more demanding composition than her more architecturally elaborate works. The 1701 date places this among her most assured mature productions, with the dark-ground technique fully mastered and her botanical observation at its peak.

The stone table is rendered with a cool, medium-toned ground layered with warm-grey washes and a hard front edge. Ruysch's flower technique in 1701 shows her characteristic progression: dark underpainting establishes shadow, mid-tone glazes build colour, lighter glazes describe the lit surfaces, and final highlights in lead white or light yellow mark the brightest petal points. The composition is typically centred with flowers breaking to either side.