Rachel Ruysch

Rachel Ruysch was a Dutch painter of flowers, the daughter of the anatomist Frederik Ruysch, who trained with the still-life painter Willem van Aelst in Amsterdam. Over a career of more than sixty years she painted crowded, asymmetrical bouquets with insects and nests, finely observed and widely sought after by collectors across Europe. From 1708 to 1716 she was court painter to the Elector Palatine in Dusseldorf. The National Gallery in London holds her Flowers in a Vase, and the Fitzwilliam Museum also has her work.