Vase of flowers

Rachel Ruysch was the greatest Dutch flower painter of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, and her Vase of Flowers from around 1700 exemplifies the opulent, scientifically precise floral still life she brought to its highest expression. Ruysch had trained with Willem van Aelst and spent nearly half a century producing flower paintings of extraordinary technical brilliance, becoming court painter to the Elector Palatine. Her works combine botanical accuracy — depicting flowers from different seasons and regions simultaneously in impossible but visually perfect arrangements — with the dramatic compositional ambition of history painting applied to natural objects.

Ruysch arranges her flowers in a stone niche or architectural setting with characteristic attention to the varied textures of petals, leaves, and stems, and to the optical effects of dewdrops, insects, and decaying leaves that animate the composition. Her palette is rich and varied, with each blossom rendered in its distinct local color.