In 1700, while already a highly esteemed and in demand artist, Rachel Ruysch painted her most ambitious work to date, A Still Life with Devil’s Trumpet Flowers, Peonies, Hibiscus, Passionflowers and Other Plants. It included 22 identifiable species – both botanical and entomological – from across the globe. A praying mantis descends onto a cape lily while a grasshopper feeds on a passion fruit beneath a giant owl moth. Nestled amongst an array of exquisitely observed flora sits a pineapple, the pinnacle of contemporary horticultural ambition, which had only recently been successfully cultivated in the Netherlands for the first time.

It’s a painting that neatly sums up what made Ruysch such a uniquely gifted and successful artist. Born at a time when the understanding of the natural world was expanding at a rapid pace, her works combined phenomenal artistic talent with an in-depth botanical knowledge. Her frequent focus on exotic species rarely depicted by her peers put her in a league of her own and appealed to a contemporary clientele with passions for both art and horticulture, spurred in large part by the range of new species arriving in the Dutch Republic from colonial territories.

In a career that spanned seven decades, Ruysch would become arguably the most famous painter in the Netherlands, the first woman to be admitted to The Hague’s artistic society, the Confrerie Pictura, and court painter to Johann Wilhelm II, the Elector Palatine. Her works frequently sold for more during her lifetime than Rembrandt’s did during his. Such was her level of fame that she was never forgotten, as many female painters of the era were, merely relegated to a minor figure in art history, primarily on account of her gender and subject-matter.

The tide started to turn in 2021 when she was one of three female painters selected to join the Rijksmuseum’s previously all-male Gallery of Honour, which pays homage to the greatest artists of the Dutch Golden Age, a much belated gesture. Now she is finally the subject of her first monographic exhibition, currently showing at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston after runs at the Alte Pinakothek in Munich and the Toledo Museum of Art. The catalogue accompanying the show is the first serious work dedicated to her in over 70 years.

The daughter of a prominent botanist, Frederick Ruysch, Rachel grew up in a learned, prosperous and well-connected environment. Surrounded by her father’s botanical specimens and books, Rachel would have been exposed to advances in knowledge first hand.

Ruysch was fortunate that her father was also supportive of her artistic talent, taking the unusual step of apprenticing her to Willem van Aelst, the leading botanical painter of the day. With van Aelst she honed her painting and compositional ability, developing a mastery of differentiating textures. But according to her biographer, Jan van Gool, she soon surpassed her teacher.

From around 1690 to 1700, when she was in her late 20s and 30s, she painted mainly nosegays and medium-sized floral bouquets. Her nosegays were charmingly messy affairs, infused with a deceptive casualness that belied the skill in their execution, but it was in her floral bouquets that her talent truly shone. Her encyclopaedic knowledge of flowers revealed itself in the way she portrayed both their appearance and behaviour, capturing the texture of their petals and stamens and the manner in which they blossomed, faded and wilted in masterful compositions that left her competitors in the shade.

Ruysch’s inclusion of exotic species truly set her apart from her peers. Of the approximately 12 floral vases she painted during this period, four focused solely on species imported from the Americas, Africa and Asia. Her awareness and access to these species was likely down to her father. In 1685, he had been appointed professor of native plants at Amsterdam’s Hortus Medicus botanical garden, and it seems only natural that he would have taken her there.

The Hortus Medicus was one of a number of gardens, both public and private, whose emergence coincided with the expansion of colonial trade in the second half of the 17th century and offered unprecedented access to new species of plants. It boasted one of the richest collections of native and exotic plants in Europe as well as the largest hothouses in the Dutch Republic, which were dedicated to the cultivation of species from colonial territories.

Still Life with Devil’s Trumpet, a Cactus, a Fig Branch, Honeysuckle and Other Flowers in a Blue Vase Resting on a Ledge (1690-95) features a number of flowers and plant specimens that were only just starting to be grown in Dutch hothouses. At its centre is a White Devil’s Trumpet, a night-blooming plant from Mexico and Asia. Ruysch was among the first to depict this exotic bloom and renders its folding white petals in exquisitely fine detail. It is bordered by a yellow capitaneja, also from Mexico and the red trumpet vine from North America. To the top left can be seen a prickly pear cactus, another Mexican specimen that had only arrived at the Hortus Medicus from the Dutch colony of Curaçao in 1890. It is an uncomfortable fact that Ruysch’s ability to create the beautiful and innovative works that secured her reputation was often connected to ugly colonial exploitation.

A 1692 portrait of Ruysch by Michiel van Musscher shows the esteem she was held in at this time, while also offering intriguing insights into her working practice. Seated at a desk with a blank canvas behind her, Ruysch holds a palette and brush in one hand while placing a flower in a vase in front of her. Books and prints are piled on the table, suggesting that they will also act as a reference for the final composition. That Ruysch used books and prints as a source as well as live specimens is no surprise. Very few of her works could have been painted wholly from nature. Apart from the fact that the abundant bouquets could never have fitted into the small vases that supposedly contain them, Ruysch also featured flowers that blossomed at different times of year and existed in different climates.

Her inclusion of entomological subjects also shows her taking liberties with the laws of nature. A wide range of animal and insect life can be found in Ruysch’s still-lifes – butterflies, beetles, grasshoppers, bees, wasps, ants, dragonflies and lizards all inhabit her works. But while painted in meticulous detail, native and exotic species appear in the same composition, as do nocturnal and diurnal butterflies.

This in no way detracts from her knowledge or skill. Her works can simply be seen as natural Cabinets of Curiosities on canvas designed to appeal to her knowledgeable clientele. The majority of those who bought Ruysch’s work were interested in botany and the scientific exploration of the world as well as art, making her paintings the perfect addition to their collections.

While forging a successful and highly lucrative career Ruysch also found time to marry the portrait painter Juriaen Pool in 1693. The couple had nine children between 1695 and 1706 with a tenth following in 1711. Somewhat astonishingly, Ruysch’s production appears to have slowed only slightly during her child-bearing and rearing years. It seems that Pool, like her father, was supportive of her talent, their combined efforts helping her overcome many of the obstacles that faced a female painter in that era. Pool may well have sponsored her admission to the Confrerie Pictura – both husband and wife were elected in 1701, with Ruysch identified by her married name, Mrs Pool.

Her father appears to have been instrumental in securing Ruysch’s appointment as court painter to Johann Wilhelm II in 1708. Letters exchanged between the two men reveal that Frederick advised Johann Wilhelm on the expansion of his cabinet of curiosities while also taking the opportunity to praise the artistic skills of his daughter.

Ruysch’s election to the Conferie Pictura and position as court painter no doubt elevated the already successful artist to another level. It also appears to have increased her desire to experiment. During the first two decades of the 18th century, her canvases became ever larger and her bouquets more sumptuous. In 1710, she produced a magnificent bouquet and accompanying fruit piece for the wealthy Leiden textile merchant Pieter de la Court van der Voort, who was not only one of the most important Dutch art collectors of the period but also a renowned and innovative gardener. These works took Ruysch a year to paint and would be her most expensive sale ever, costing a phenomenal 1,300 guilders.

Ruysch was also clearly determined to keep abreast of current trends in the art world and the early 1720s saw her respond to the growing influence of Rococo by adopting blueish tones, a lighter palette and brighter backgrounds. However, in 1723, Ruysch and her husband won 75,000 guilders in the Amsterdam lottery, a phenomenal windfall that meant she was no longer obliged to paint for a living and it seems that, for a time, she chose not to. Her output slowed considerably in the years after this good fortune.

Yet, when she was around 75, she began to produce about one painting a year for the next decade of her life, likely for the simple reason that she wanted to. Although more modest in size and ambition than her works from the early decades of the century, they still show a desire to keep up with contemporary painting styles. She was clearly proud of her ability to produce such works in her 70s and 80s as she included her age in the signature line of almost all her late paintings.

Ruysch was held in such high esteem that a compendium of 12 poems dedicated to her was published in 1750, the year she died at the age of 86. She continued to sell for high prices at auction in the 19th and 20th centuries, and her works featured in both private collections and museums. Yet her reputation and fame has declined significantly over the centuries, a result of both art historical snobbery and sexism.

Still-life was positioned at the bottom of the Hierarchy of Genres laid out in the 17th century, and we are now fully aware of the way in which female painters were historically sidelined by a male art historical establishment. But while artists such as Artemisia Gentileschi and Michaelina Wautier are now gaining their rightful recognition, it seems that Ruysch’s subject matter can still count against her. While praising their execution, a recent review of the MFA exhibition dismissed her paintings as ‘essentially – even merely – decorative, like the highest order of wallpaper’.

It’s an attitude that suggests the natural world is not a subject worthy of our attention. Yet, if you take the time to linger over the details of Ruysch’s sublime paintings, you cannot fail to share her awe of nature’s bounty and innovation. It seems unlikely that she will ever return to the level of fame she enjoyed during her lifetime, but for those who have the same passion for art and nature as the 17th- and 18th-century collectors who avidly sought out her works, Ruysch’s star will continue to shine.