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Rachel Ruysch Research Paper

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What would you consider today’s most desired status symbols? A mansion or a beach side home? A designer handbag or clothes? In Rachel Ruysch’s day it was a simple tulip. Looking at her floral still life paintings can reveal an entire hidden world. Rachel Ruysch was born in 1664 in the northern Netherlands. She was born into a wealthy and prominent family; her father a scientist and her mother the daughter of an architect. Her father was a professor of anatomy and botany and also an amateur painter. From a young age Ruysch would draw and paint the insects and plants in her fathers collection. At age fifteen, she was an apprentice to William van Aeist, who was a prominent flower painter in Amsterdam at the time and she studied with him until …show more content…

The Netherlands became the largest importers of new and exotic plants and flowers from around the world (Robinson). Once valued primarily for their use as herbs or medicine, flowers became newly appreciated simply for their beauty and fragrance. They became prized luxuries and desirable status symbols for the wealthy. Botanists and gardeners sought the rarest specimens imported from overseas trade and the tulip was the most exotic.
Flowers In a Vase was a painting that Ruysch painted after 1700. This composition balances a swirl of twisting blossoms along a diagonal axis (Chadwick 138). The variety of blooms and colors, and the painter’s subtle touch and impeccable surface treatment distinguish her work (Chadwick 138). Flowers lavishly spill out of the vase, filling the entire picture space. Some are in full bloom, others droop and wilt, as leaves and curving stems entwine throughout (Robinson). The lighting in this painting falls on the flowers from the bottoms left to top right, leaving the closed peonies at the edge in shadow. Complementary colors create harmony, as warm yellows and rose balance cool blues and greens. Against the dark background, her sophisticated palette creates a flawless sense of depth and three-dimensionality (Wieseman). And looking more closely, the viewer and depict several insects in the painting- caterpillars, ants, and a grasshopper are

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