Enfilade

Opening in November at the Alte Pinakothek:

Rachel Ruysch (1664–1750), Nature into Art
Alte Pinakothek, Munich, 26 November 2024 — 16 March 2025
Toledo Museum of Art, 12 April — 27 July 2025
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston 23 August — 7 December 2025

Rachel Ruysch, Blumenstrauß / Bouquet of Flowers, 1715 (Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen, Alte Pinakothek München, 878).

Rachel Ruysch’s deceptively realistic floral still lifes—paintings of exotic plants and fruit, butterflies and insects—were already sought-after and expensive collector’s items during the artist’s lifetime. Demand was so great that the Amsterdam painter could afford to produce merely a few works a year.

As the daughter of the renowned professor of anatomy and botany Frederik Ruysch, the first female member of The Hague’s Confrerie Pictura, a court painter in Düsseldorf, a lottery game winner, and the mother of eleven children, Rachel was an exceptional figure. In November, the Alte Pinakothek will open the world’s first major monographic exhibition of her work. Discover the wondrous world of Rachel Ruysch, who between art and science perfected fine painting and artistic freedom amidst illustrious patrons in Amsterdam, Düsseldorf, and Florence.