What was the working location for Rachel Ruysch in early 1710s?
Rachel Ruysch Rachel Ruysch ( 3 June 1664 – 12 October 1750 ) was a Dutch still-life painter from the Northern Netherlands . She specialized in flowers , inventing her own 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 , being followed by Jan van Huysum , who took flower painting to another degree of popularity . Personal life and career . Rachel Ruysch was born on 3 June 1664 in The Hague to the scientist Frederik Ruysch and Maria Post , the daughter of the architect Pieter Post . Her father was also a professor of anatomy and botany . He had a vast collection of animal skeletons , and mineral and botany samples which Rachel used to practice her drawing skills . At a young age she began to paint the flowers and insects of her fathers collection in the popular manner of Otto Marseus van Schrieck . Working from these samples Rachel matched her fathers ability to depict nature with great accuracy . Later , as Rachel became more accomplished , she taught her father ( and also her sister , Anna Ruysch ) how to paint . In 1679 , at age fifteen , Ruysch was apprenticed to Willem van Aelst , a prominent flower painter in Amsterdam . His studio in Amsterdam looked out over the studio of the flower painter Maria van Oosterwijck . Ruysch studied with van Aelst until his death in 1683 . Besides painting technique he taught her how to arrange a bouquet in a vase so it would look spontaneous and less formalized . This technique produced a more realistic and three-dimensional effect in her paintings . By the time Ruysch was eighteen she was producing and selling independently signed works . She would also have known and consorted with the flower painters Jan and Maria Moninckx , Alida Withoos , and Johanna Helena Herolt-Graff , who all were about her age and who worked for the hortus owner Agnes Block and who , like her father , also worked with the plant collectors Jan and Caspar Commelin . In 1693 she married the Amsterdam portrait painter Juriaen Pool , with whom she had ten children . Throughout her marriage and adult life she continued to paint and produce commissions for an international circle of patrons . Other women at this time were expected to participate in art forms more traditionally practiced by women , such as sewing and spinning . Ruysch continued working as a painter after she married , mostly likely because her contribution to the familys income allowed them to hire help to care for their children . Ruysch died in Amsterdam on 12 October 1750 . After her death , despite changing attitudes about flower paintings , Ruysch has maintained a strong reputation . Works . It is unknown whether Ruysch was a member of the Amsterdam Guild of Saint Luke , but early signed works by her in the 1680s show the influence of Otto Marseus van Schrieck . By 1699 she and her family had moved to The Hague , where she was offered membership in the Confrerie Pictura as their first female member . In 1701 she and her husband became members of The Hague Painters Guild . In 1708 , Ruysch was invited to work for the court in Düsseldorf and serve as court painter to Johann Wilhelm , Elector Palatine . She obtained a contract for works painted at home that she periodically brought to Düsseldorf . She continued working for him and his wife from 1708 until the princes death in 1716 . Art historians consider Ruysch to be one of the most talented still life artists of either sex . By the time of her death at age 86 she had produced hundreds of paintings , of which more than 250 have been documented or are attributed to her . Her dated works establish that she painted from the age of 15 until she was 83 , a few years before her death . Historians are able to establish this with certainty because she included her age when signing her paintings . Style . Ruysch had a very good understanding of drawing and the techniques of earlier traditions . This knowledge improved her painting abilities . Stylistically , her artwork , with its playful composition and brilliant colors , was part of the rococo movement . She paid extensive attention to all details in her work . Every petal was created painstakingly with delicate brushwork . The background of Ruyschs paintings are usually dark which was the fashion for flower painting in the second half of the 17th century . Her asymmetrical compositions with drooping flowers and wild stems created paintings that seemed to possess a great energy about them . In her early work Ruysch painted a large number of forest floor pictures that feature small animals , reptiles , butterflies , and fungi . She later adopted flower painting as her main concern and continued to paint until her death , thus continuing the 17th-century style right down to the middle of the following century . Ruyschs skill lay in the minute observation of each flower in an extremely naturalistic way , composed into an elaborate arrangement that would be very difficult to achieve in nature – the flowers would not support each other so well under such an arrangement . In common with most flower pieces from the last third of the 17th century , the colours of the flowers are much more carefully balanced than in the earlier pictures . The symbolism of each flower was elaborately developed in the 17th century , but most of this concerned the introduction of a single flower into a Vanitas piece . Apart from Jan van Huysum , no 18th-century flower painter matched the skill of Rachel Ruysch . Reception . Ruysch enjoyed great fame and reputation in her lifetime . When she died in 1750 , eleven poets paid her their respects with poems about her . In the 17th century the Dutch were very interested in flowers and gardening , so paintings that highlighted the beauty of nature were highly valued . This helped to build and maintain Ruyschs clientele throughout her career . In her lifetime her paintings were sold for prices as high as 750–1200 guilders . In comparison , Rembrandt rarely received more than 500 guilders for a painting in his lifetime . In 1999 a painting by Ruysch was discovered in a farmhouse in Normandy and was sold at auction for 2.9 million French francs , about US$508,000 . In March of 2021 Leysters work was added to the Gallery of Honor at the Rijksmuseum . Ruysch , Gesina ter Borch , and Judith Leyster are the first women to be included in the gallery . External links . - Old Masters : Overlooked Women Artists - Works and literature on Rachel Ruysch at PubHist - Flowers in an Urn Zoomable at google