Ask Katy Hessel: Rachel Ruysch #rijksmuseum #history #museum #podcast #amsterdam #booktok

We asked art historian and author Katy Hessel - known for her work championing women artists - to answer questions from our followers. You asked: How did Rachel Ruysch make her flowers look so real? Did she paint them from life, or imagination? Rachel Ruysch's father was a professor of anatomy and botany, and as a girl she drew from his preserved plant specimens. That early training never left her. By fifteen she was apprenticed to Willem van Aelst in Amsterdam, learning to compose lush bouquets. When her father later became professor at Amsterdam's botanical gardens, she gained access to a living archive to return to again and again. Ruysch didn't race against time as her flowers faded. She sketched, studied, and built her own garden of memory, painting every petal from years of noticing. Science, patience, wonder. That's how she made these flowers bloom forever. 🖼️ Rachel Ruysch, Still Life with Flowers in a Glass Vase, c. 1690 - c. 1720 #rijksmuseum #history #museum #amsterdam #KatyHessel #women