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Lot Essay
Regarded as the greatest female still life painter of all time, Rachel Ruysch was destined to depict such subjects from an early age. Her father was an eminent professor of anatomy and botany and amateur painter in Amsterdam, while her mother was the daughter of the acclaimed architect Pieter Post. At fifteen, she became a pupil of the still life painter Willem van Aelst, staying with him until his death in 1683. She married the portrait painter Juriaen Pool in 1693. Unlike her illustrious predecessor, Judith Leyster, who largely gave up painting following her marriage to Jan Miense Molenaer, Ruysch’s artistic production continued unabated following her marriage and the birth of the couple’s ten children. Between 1708 and 1713 she and her husband served as court painters to Johann Wilhelm II, Elector Palatinate, in Düsseldorf. Following the Elector’s death, the couple returned to Amsterdam, where Ruysch worked until at least 1747, the year of her last dated work.
The present painting is the earliest dated work by Ruysch, executed when she was still in her mid- to late teens. It belongs to a group of five similar works, four of which date to the early part of the 1680s with a fifth dated 1689 (see Bernardi, op. cit., p. 159). The elegant handling of paint in which Ruysch crisply defines the various compositional elements by casting light on the arrangement from the left side owes much to van Aelst, in whose studio she remained at the time of the painting’s creation. The painting's florid signature (fig. 1), no doubt an indication of the young artist’s pride in her creation, likewise finds parallels in van Aelst’s paintings, a prime example of which is his Group of Flowers of 1675 in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge. However, the composition of a tightly packed arrangement of fruit and flowers suspended from a nail before a fictive stone arch finds few parallels in her master’s work, suggesting instead her familiarity with the paintings of Abraham Mignon and, in particular, Jan Davidsz. de Heem. Despite its early date, the painting’s sound drawing and technique allied with a sophisticated composition infused with a degree of movement anticipates the artist’s mature works.
Ruysch, whose paintings fetched high prices in her lifetime, was one of the few Dutch still life painters whose paintings continued to captivate leading French and English connoisseurs in the second half of the 18th and 19th centuries. While these collectors tended to favor genre subjects, landscapes and, to a lesser extent, history paintings over still lifes, Ruysch’s subtly refined works, along with those by her contemporary Jan van Huysum, brought extraordinary sums whenever they appeared at auction.
The present painting is the earliest dated work by Ruysch, executed when she was still in her mid- to late teens. It belongs to a group of five similar works, four of which date to the early part of the 1680s with a fifth dated 1689 (see Bernardi, op. cit., p. 159). The elegant handling of paint in which Ruysch crisply defines the various compositional elements by casting light on the arrangement from the left side owes much to van Aelst, in whose studio she remained at the time of the painting’s creation. The painting's florid signature (fig. 1), no doubt an indication of the young artist’s pride in her creation, likewise finds parallels in van Aelst’s paintings, a prime example of which is his Group of Flowers of 1675 in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge. However, the composition of a tightly packed arrangement of fruit and flowers suspended from a nail before a fictive stone arch finds few parallels in her master’s work, suggesting instead her familiarity with the paintings of Abraham Mignon and, in particular, Jan Davidsz. de Heem. Despite its early date, the painting’s sound drawing and technique allied with a sophisticated composition infused with a degree of movement anticipates the artist’s mature works.
Ruysch, whose paintings fetched high prices in her lifetime, was one of the few Dutch still life painters whose paintings continued to captivate leading French and English connoisseurs in the second half of the 18th and 19th centuries. While these collectors tended to favor genre subjects, landscapes and, to a lesser extent, history paintings over still lifes, Ruysch’s subtly refined works, along with those by her contemporary Jan van Huysum, brought extraordinary sums whenever they appeared at auction.