{"id":16604,"date":"2025-10-14T23:35:36","date_gmt":"2025-10-14T23:35:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nationalgunowner.org\/index.php\/2025\/10\/14\/rachel-ruyschs-tirade-of-beauty-at-bostons-mfa\/"},"modified":"2025-10-14T23:35:38","modified_gmt":"2025-10-14T23:35:38","slug":"rachel-ruyschs-tirade-of-beauty-at-bostons-mfa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nationalgunowner.org\/index.php\/2025\/10\/14\/rachel-ruyschs-tirade-of-beauty-at-bostons-mfa\/","title":{"rendered":"Rachel Ruysch\u2019s Tirade of Beauty at Boston\u2019s MFA"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Rachel Ruysch, Posy of Flowers with a Beetle on a Stone Ledge<\/em>, 1741. Oil on canvas. Courtesy the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Craving ever new varieties in nature for experimentation, Darwin wrote to his good friend and botanist, Joseph Hooker<\/a>, \u201cI have a passion to grow orchid seeds\u2026for love of Heaven favour my madness & have some lichens or mosses scraped off & sent me. I am a gambler & love a wild experiment.\u201d It seems that Darwin was not the only one to crave exotic flowers. Three centuries earlier, the Dutch were hot on the trail to expand their imperial power by collecting exotic specimens from all over the world. The Dutch East India Company was established in 1602 and the West East India Company in 1621, enabling the empire\u2019s expansion through their maritime fleet. By using enslaved labor, they amassed huge collections of flowers, insects, reptiles and birds from North and South America, Africa, Australia, India and even Borneo. The difficulty in transporting all of these delicate specimens across vast oceans was extreme. There were rats on board ships, and radical changes of temperature going from the tropics to frigid Europe. The Dutch greenhouses on Cape Horn were a stopover for the exotics, before the last treacherous sail home. Cape Horn has the deadliest seas on Earth.<\/p>\n

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During the 1600s in the Netherlands, hundreds of devoted scientists and artists documented these discoveries. One of the most famous was the painter Rachel Ruysch<\/a>. Her father, Frederik Ruysch<\/a>, a renowned collector and artist, was known for his anatomical, zoological and botanical specimens, as well as his embalming technique. This was Rachel\u2019s early laboratory until she went on to study painting, becoming the highest-paid painter in the Netherlands, earning more money than Rembrandt<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Born in 1664, she painted for seven decades, dying in 1750 at the age of 86. She painted 185 known works (possibly 250). She was lauded during her time, internationally famous and the subject of poems. She painted from the age of 15 and well into her 80s. Lest we forget, Ruysch also had ten children. None of the poems mentions that.<\/p>\n

And her paintings are downright gorgeous. The vitality of her work, the meticulous accuracy, the fullness of color and the enchanting compositions are a wonder to behold. She painted nature in all its blooming, populated with exotic flowers, fruits, insects, reptiles, moths and butterflies. The paintings are rich in vibrant color, deeply shaded and with exact anatomical precision. She recorded for the ages flora and fauna, insects and reptiles, that may now already be extinct or on their way to extinction.<\/p>\n

\"An\"An<\/a>
Michiel van Musscher, Rachel Ruysch<\/em>, 1692. Oil on canvas. Courtesy the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The MFA in Boston is displaying 35 of Ruysch\u2019s paintings in all their glory in \u201cRachel Ruysch: Artist, Naturalist, and Pioneer.\u201d In the floral still lifes, she focuses not just on the blooms but also on the creatures that populated the flowers. From 1686, Forest Recess with Flowers<\/i>, the blooms are framed in loping, draping milk thistle leaves, almost like reptilian skin. A curling mushroom below, a frog, snail, moths, tree trunk, the clay forest floor\u2014these details lift her far beyond a flower painter into a deep and astute scientific observer.<\/p>\n

In 1714, she paints a still life with 25 species from 15 botanical families of flowers and fruit. Still Life with Fruits and Flowers<\/i> displays a cacophony of pomegranates, peaches, corn, wheat, grapes, squash, pumpkin, along with tulips, peonies, lizard, butterflies and moths. You wonder how long it took her to paint these bounties before decay set in. Everything is fresh, glistening, delicious, fragrant\u2014alive. A sumptuous, irresistible feast, joining the hungry reptiles and insects.<\/p>\n

She doesn\u2019t stop there. In 1735, Still Life of Exotic Flowers on a Marble Ledge<\/i>, she paints 36 species from around the world. Represented are flowers native to North and South America, South Africa, the Caribbean, East and Southeast Asia. She includes in her many paintings 17 species of diurnal butterflies (active during the day), 24 species of moths, spiders and many species of bee beetles, including the mango longhorn beetle from South America. There are lizards and birds and egg shells, and many plants in the cactus family. A painting technique prevalent in nature paintings during her early career was lepidochromy. Butterfly wings were pressed into the wet paint for further authenticity. Ruysch often placed exotic and native animals, butterflies and flowers together\u2014always with an astute eye for composition.<\/p>\n

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Rachel Ruysch, Still Life with Fruits and Flowers<\/em>, 1714. Oil on canvas. \u00a9 Kunstsammlungen und Museen Augsburg \/ Photo: Bayerische Staatsgem\u00e4ldesammlungen, Nicole Wilhelms \/ Courtesy Museum of Fine Arts, Boston<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

She also included frogs and toads. One, Surinam toad (Pipa pipa<\/i>), gets a portrait all to herself. The entire painting is dark green and brown, hard to see. Does it need cleaning? The toad is accompanied nearby with a specimen in a glass jar, better to see the indentations in her back where the male leaves his sperm. The eggs incubate in these small craters on her back until they hatch, fully formed.<\/p>\n

The curator, Anna Knaap<\/a>, has organized the exhibit into six luxurious sections, highlighted against sumptuously painted dark, rich burgundy and deep green walls. In the sections are specimens in glass jars of reptiles, cases of pinned butterflies and moths, maps of the empire, botanical drawings, as well as paintings by her sister Anna Ruysch<\/a> and many other Dutch painters of that time. The plant and insect specimens are from Harvard University\u2019s Herbarium and Museum of Comparative Zoology.<\/p>\n

Ruysch\u2019s last painting, Posy of Flowers with a Beetle on a Stone Ledge<\/i>, 1741, is comparatively small with very few flowers. The bowl of the pink peony is flecked with dew and a bee. It is a tender painting and luminous. To see an exhibition including all three giants\u2014Darwin, Ruysch and Emily Dickinson<\/a>, another lover of botany and flowers\u2014would be exciting. As Dickinson wrote in Flowers \u2013 Well \u2013 if anybody<\/i>:<\/p>\n

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Butterflies from St. Domingo
Cruising round the purple line\u2014
Have a system of aesthetics\u2014
Far superior to mine.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\u201c<\/b>Rachel Ruysch: Artist, Naturalist, and Pioneer<\/b><\/a>\u201d is at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, through December 7, 2025. An excellent, comprehensive, award-winning catalogue accompanies the exhibition.<\/b><\/p>\n

More in Artists<\/h3>\n

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