Why the daughter of the creator of the Kunstkamera for 65 years painted only still lifes with flowers: Rachelle Ruysch

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

When your father is a mad scientist and close friend of Peter I, it is not so easy to overshadow his glory, but the artist Rachelle Ruysch succeeded. She did not create grandiose historical scenes, did not paint portraits of the rich - only flowers. But that was enough to get rich and stay in history. What did the Dutchmen captivate with the bouquets drawn by the daughter of the anatomist-embalmer?

Rachelle Ruysch was born in The Hague, but soon the family moved to Amsterdam - her father was offered the position of director of the botanical garden and the position of an anatomy teacher. Frederic Ruysch was an extraordinary person and significantly influenced his daughter's work - however, his own artistic talent took on a very shocking form. In his youth, he received the profession of a pharmacist, quite prestigious at the end of the 17th century, but such a job did not particularly suit him - although he learned to understand chemistry and medicinal herbs quite well. Frederick fell in love with anatomy. And he went on a crime: he made a friendship (a little reinforced financially) with local gravediggers. Ruysch studied the bodies right … in the cemetery, which could bring severe punishment on his head. Over time, Frederick, by hook or by crook, managed to master the fine art of an anatomist, moreover, he made several scientific discoveries. He told the world about the existence of valves in the lymphatic vessels, opened the vomeronasal organ in the nose, but most importantly, he made a revolution in embalming. Ruysch believed that bodies processed by his method would be stored unchanged for several hundred years. It was his gloomy creation - a boy embalmed as if he was sleeping in an innocent infant dream - so amazed Peter I that he could not resist and kissed the "sleeping" child … In general, the tsar immediately became friends with Ruysch, they understood each other perfectly and spent a lot of time together, when Peter visited Holland.

But Ruysch did not stop at the embalmer's career either. He became, as they would say now, a popularizer of science - he opened a kind of gallery, where he presented "anatomical still lifes." The anatomist preferred not only to display the embalmed exhibits - he did it beautifully. Long before his colleague, the demonic doctor von Hagen, he created an anatomical museum, where trees "grew" from vessels, and human organs were surrounded by bouquets and branches. Ruysch was sincerely surprised when he was condemned, because he believed that he was demonstrating the victory of science over death. Over the years, the Ruysch collection became the basis of the Kunstkamera collection in St. Petersburg.

And what about Rachelle? She, the eldest of twelve children, helped his father in his frightening artistic experiments and made sketches. And she drew splendidly already in her childhood. Frederik Ruysch, a free-thinking and wealthy person, did not believe that a girl absolutely needed to get married and close her life on childbearing and pleasing her husband. He understood that feminine talent is no less than masculine. In addition, the famous artist Willem van Aalst was a neighbor of the "creepy house" of the Ruysch family, to whom Rachel became a student together with her sister Anna. Anna Ruysch also later became an artist, but not as famous as her sister.

Rachel had phenomenal concentration, an excellent eye and an amazing memory. Van Aalst honed her natural sense of composition and encouraged her to explore new painting techniques. And already at the age of eighteen, she began to exhibit paintings to the public under her own name, which in those years was a very courageous act for a woman, especially so young. However, it is known that no one condemned Rachel for such insolence, on the contrary - those around her admired her, called her a wonderful child and a real heroine. Ruysch with her scrupulously drawn flowers (her studies in science with her father were not in vain) got - again, let's turn to the modern language - into a trend. The fact is that in those years the Dutch suddenly fell in love with gardening and horticulture, they laid out parks in the cities, and everything went to the future glory of Holland as a "land of tulips". Tulips of a special kind - short-lived "glowing" with an unusual color - were especially good at Ruysch … Her work could be viewed for hours and each time to discover new details that were invisible at first glance. Each of Rachelle's paintings was imbued with refined symbolism, telling a story in the language of flowers.

Rachelle began to receive decent fees early, and therefore was in no hurry to get married. She met her future chosen one on the threshold of her thirties. Portrait painter Yuridan Paul was close to the royal court and traded lace in his free time from art. In this marriage, ten children were born, but six of them left the world at a young age. Rachelle took a very responsible approach to marriage and raising children, although, according to her, she raised children "with one hand, since the other was occupied with a brush." Even then, her life was not even a role model, but something from the category "do not try to repeat it yourself." Contemporaries simply did not understand how a woman can combine such a dizzying artistic career, insane creativity and a successful marriage. In those years, Yuridan, on the contrary, almost stopped painting, so Rachel also became a real support for the family.

Her work was appreciated above the work of Rembrandt. Ruysch became the first woman admitted to the Guild of Artists in The Hague, held the position of court painter of the Elector of the Palatinate, received orders from collectors throughout Europe … And in 1723 she won 75,000 guilders in the Lottery of the Northern Netherlands - it seems that she was not only talented, but also fantastic lucky.

The artist lived for 85 years. She stopped painting after the death of her husband, when she had more than two hundred paintings on her account - however, about a hundred have come down to us. Rachel's works are now kept in museums around the world - and they are in no hurry to reveal all the secrets of the anatomist's daughter, who conquered Europe with flowers.

There is an exhibit in Kuntskamera today that tells a sad story about how Peter the Great dealt with his wife's lover.