Bouquet of Flowers

Rachel Ruysch became one of the most admired flower painters of the Dutch Republic, and one of the very few women able to build a long, independent career in that world. She was the daughter of an Amsterdam professor of anatomy and botany, and she grew up around his famous collection of specimens, which trained her eye for the exact look of a petal, a stem or an insect. A bouquet like this belongs to a Dutch tradition in which cut flowers were arranged as they never actually grew, gathering blossoms from different seasons into one impossible vase. Collectors prized that mix of beauty and precise natural detail. Ruysch went on painting into her eighties and worked for the court of the Elector Palatine, unusual security for an artist of her time.