Rachel Ruysch

Rachel Ruysch (3 June 1664 – 12 October 1750) was a Dutch still-life painter from the Dutch Republic. 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 female painter of the Dutch Golden Age.

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 and an amateur painter. 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 father's collection in the popular manner of Otto Marseus van Schrieck.

Working from these samples Rachel matched her father's ability to depict nature with great accuracy. Rachel and her sister Anna Ruysch learned to draw and paint within their father's extensive scientific collections, which provided abundant botanical and zoological specimens for study.