Rachel Ruysch
Today we present a beautiful bouquet of flowers created by Rachel Ruysch, a Dutch still-life painter from the Northern Netherlands. She specialized in flowers, inventing her style and achieving international fame in her lifetime. Due to a long and successful career that spanned over six decades, she became the best-documented woman painter of the Dutch Golden Age; she is a perfect artist to highlight in March when we celebrate Women's History Month!
Ruysch created this beautiful bouquet entirely from her imagination! It's quite fascinating because these flowers never really bloom together because they have different blooming seasons. But Ruysch, using meticulously detailed drawings of individual flowers, managed to bring this imaginary arrangement to life in an astonishingly realistic way. She paid attention to every detail, from the flowers to the insects and even the dew drops.
Flowers have always been symbols of beauty, and for Ruysch, they were also a way to showcase God's incredible creativity in the natural world. At the same time, though, flowers are fragile and don't last long, which can also be a reminder of mortality, decay, and death. It's interesting how, even in their beauty, Ruysch's flowers include insects that symbolize the inevitable cycle of life and destruction.
P.S. If you love flowers in art, please check our Flowers in Art 50 Postcards Set! You will find there some of Ruysh's works :)
P.P.S. Ruysch used flowers to tell stories dealing with the epic themes of greed, pride, and death. Explore one of her most famous flower still-life paintings!