Still Life with Flowers in a Glass Vase

Rachel Ruysch was among the most celebrated painters in Europe during her long career, and this Rijksmuseum canvas of around 1700 demonstrates the distinctive qualities that made her the equal — in contemporary estimation — of any flower painter including Jan van Huysum. Born in 1664 into a scientifically minded Amsterdam family — her father Willem Ruysch was an anatomy professor — she developed an unusually rigorous approach to botanical and entomological observation that sets her work apart from more decorative competitors. Her compositions tend toward greater naturalistic drama than Van Huysum's: darker, more theatrical backgrounds, heavier baroque weight in flower masses, and a more explicit inclusion of decay and insect life as memento mori elements. The Rijksmuseum holding places this early mature work in the national collection alongside the full tradition of Dutch still-life painting from which Ruysch emerged and which she helped to define for a generation of successors.

Ruysch employed a dark-ground technique typical of late seventeenth-century Flemish influence: a brown or black imprimatura over which flowers are built up from dark mid-tones to bright highlights. This approach produces stronger chiaroscuro than Van Huysum's pale-ground method. Her handling of glass is particularly accomplished, with transparent vessels showing stems through distorting water.