Rachel Ruysch (1664 - 1750)

• Ruysch was a still-life painter from the Northern Netherlands.

• Her father was a professor of anatomy and botany.

• As a Fourteen year old, Rachel was admitted to the workshop of a painter Willem van Aelst.

• 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.

• In 1693 she married the Amsterdam portrait painter Juriaen Pool, with whom she had ten children.

• Throughout her marriage she continued to paint and produce commissions for an international circle of patrons.

• By 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.

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