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.