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Lot Essay
Rachel Ruysch is generally regarded as the greatest woman painter of the Dutch Golden Age and one of the most celebrated woman still life painters of all time, a subject matter she seemed destined to treat from a young age. Her father was a professor of anatomy and botany as well as an amateur painter in Amsterdam, while her mother was the daughter of the acclaimed painter and architect Pieter Post. At the age of fifteen, she entered the studio of the still life painter Willem van Aelst, staying with him until his death in 1683. Unlike her illustrious predecessor, Judith Leyster, who largely gave up painting following her marriage to Jan Miense Molenaer, Ruysch’s artistic production continued apace following her marriage to the portrait painter Juriaen Pool in 1693, with whom she had ten children. The couple served as court painters to Johann Wilhelm II, Elector Palatinate, in Düsseldorf between 1708 and 1713. Upon the Elector’s death, the couple returned to Amsterdam, where Ruysch continued to work until at least 1747, the year of her last dated painting.
This remarkably early painting, which was evidently unknown to both John Smith and Cornelis Hofstede de Groot, was painted the year Ruysch departed van Aelst’s studio and established herself as an independent master. Like van Aelst, who had engaged in the production of fruit still lifes since the 1640s, in this painting Ruysch proves herself a keen observer of nature, meticulously depicting the various textures of the green and red grapes, peaches, plums and insects atop a stone ledge. As Marianne Berardi discussed in her dissertation, the painting belongs to a small group of works painted in the early 1680s that confirm the continued influence of her master. Berardi (loc. cit.) considered the present painting the second earliest of the group, after only the Fruit piece with oysters and grapes in the Musée Granet, Aix-en-Provence; however, in his entry to the 2005 exhibition of paintings from the Hascoe Collection, Peter C. Sutton pointed to a sixth, similarly conceived painting of flowers, dated 1682 (sold Christie’s, London, 29 June 1979, lot 41).
This remarkably early painting, which was evidently unknown to both John Smith and Cornelis Hofstede de Groot, was painted the year Ruysch departed van Aelst’s studio and established herself as an independent master. Like van Aelst, who had engaged in the production of fruit still lifes since the 1640s, in this painting Ruysch proves herself a keen observer of nature, meticulously depicting the various textures of the green and red grapes, peaches, plums and insects atop a stone ledge. As Marianne Berardi discussed in her dissertation, the painting belongs to a small group of works painted in the early 1680s that confirm the continued influence of her master. Berardi (loc. cit.) considered the present painting the second earliest of the group, after only the Fruit piece with oysters and grapes in the Musée Granet, Aix-en-Provence; however, in his entry to the 2005 exhibition of paintings from the Hascoe Collection, Peter C. Sutton pointed to a sixth, similarly conceived painting of flowers, dated 1682 (sold Christie’s, London, 29 June 1979, lot 41).