Boston Flora

Tag: Rachel Ruysch

  • Now through Sunday, December 7 – Rachel Ruysch Exhibit

    At the intersection of art and science, the still life paintings of Rachel Ruysch (1664–1750) present an extraordinary variety of plants, reptiles, and insects. Though she achieved great success in her lifetime, Ruysch’s work was largely overlooked in the centuries following her death and has not been the subject of a major exhibition—until now. Rachel Ruysch: Artist, Naturalist, and Pioneer at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA), is the first-ever retrospective dedicated to the artist, tracing the full arc of her seven-decade career.

    The exhibition presents 35 of Ruysch’s finest paintings—some being shown to the public for the first time— alongside plant and insect specimens from Harvard University’s Herbarium and Museum of Comparative Zoology. Ruysch’s paintings of species imported from Dutch colonial territories revolutionized the genre of still lifes while reflecting the intertwined histories of exploitation, resource extraction, and colonial expansion. The exhibition also includes works by other women artists including her sister Anna Ruysch, Maria Sibylla Merian, and Alida Withoos. Together, these works reveal how women advanced scientific knowledge in Europe during the 17th and 18th centuries.

    The exhibition was curated by Anna Knaap, Rose-Marie and Eijk van Otterloo Curator of Paintings, Art of Europe, with guidance for the scientific content from Charles Davis, Professor of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University and Curator of Vascular Plants in the Harvard University Herbaria.

    For complete information, and to reserve tickets, visit https://www.mfa.org/press-release/rachel-ruysch-artist-naturalist-and-pioneer. The show closes December 7, so plan now.

  • Friday, February 11, 9:00 am – 10:00 am EST – Women, Botany, and Art: From the Garden to the Easel, Online

    In this highly illustrated Berkshire Gardens Trust talk on Friday, February 11, Dr Twigs Way will present an overview of the role of female artists in floral and botanic art from the 16th to the 19th century. Including discussion of the lives and works of female artists including Giovanna Garzoni, Maria van Oosterwijck, Rachel Ruysch, Elizabeth Blackwell, Mary Moser, Mary Delany (and Queen Charlotte); and Augusta Withers and Sarah Drake. 

    Floral art has been often dismissed as a ‘pleasing pastime’ for ladies of leisure, but this talk will explore how an association with floral and botanical works enabled women to enter the male-dominated worlds of art and science. Twigs will consider themes including perceived divisions between floral and botanic art, the amateur and the professional, the role of royal patronage and scientific studies, and of course the vexed question of marriage

    ​Twigs Way is a garden historian, writer and researcher. Twigs is fascinated by the past and intrigued by the role of flowers, gardens and landscape in art and culture of all kinds. Her talks and books reflect that endless curiosity, with books on plants and gardens exploring themes of symbolism and meaning, class and gender, art and literature:  every plant has a tale to tell, every garden a past.  

    Twigs is an accredited Arts Society lecturer and her history of the Chrysanthemum in art and culture was published by Reaktion in 2020. She is currently working on the “equally golden daffodil”.

    ​Booking: Please book online. The tickets are £5 each.  We will send you a Zoom link for the lecture a few days before the 11th February. The lecture will last approximately 1 hour, followed by questions. The lecture will NOT be recorded.  

    ​Queries: Please contact Janet by email at bgtmembership@gmail.com

    Still Life with Bowl of Citrons, late 1640s.By Giovanna Garzoni

  • Thursday, July 15, 1:30 pm – 3:30 pm – A Feminist’s Guide to Botany: Online Botanical Painting Session

    Join London Drawing Group on July 15 at 1:30 Eastern time as we step inside the magical world of BOTANY for a summer-term special exploring the history of the heroic women artists, explorers and scientists that helped forge the way that we see the world around us!

    Drawing from both the rich history of female presence Botanical Art, as well as the inspiring stories of women botanical explorers through the ages, this class will be an incredible opportunity to immerse yourself in the work of artists such as Maria Sybilla Merian, Marianne North, Rachel Ruysch (painting pictured below) and others!

    The session will comprise a short visual lecture during which you will be able to make quick sketches if you choose from your own collections of plants or found leaves and flowers, then students will be led in some basic watercolour techniques and exercises to help you create your own Botanical Paintings!

    This will truly be a totally unique class and we are very excited to get drawing with you all! This lecture and all our classes are now ‘pay what you can’ so that we can reach those of you who are financially struggling during CV19. We suggest a donation of £15 but if you can’t afford that, we get it! Register HERE through Eventbrite. (Eventbrite will do the dollar conversion.)

    YOU WILL NEED A variety of plants, flowers, leaves or dried flowers to work from! You don’t need too many, just enough to make an interesting arrangement, but if you’re really caught short, just one or two houseplants or whatever you can collect from outside will be absolutely fine.

    WATERCOLORS OR GOUACHE, A VARIETY OF BRUSHES, FROM MOP HEADED TO THIN DETAIL BRUSHES, and WATERCOLOR PAPER