Still Life with Flowers in a Glass Vase

The Rijksmuseum bought this canvas in 1814, only months after French rule over the Netherlands had ended, when the young national museum was still building its collection. Ruysch had by then been dead for more than 60 years, and her flower pieces were still counted among the treasures of Dutch painting. Tulips, roses, carnations, irises, poppies, hyacinths and trailing bindweed rise out of a clear glass vase set on a marble ledge. She signed it at the lower left, Rachel Ruysch f., for fecit, made it, but left no date, so the museum can only place it somewhere between about 1690 and 1720. In her lifetime a picture like this could fetch more than 1,000 guilders, a price few painters of her day could ask.