荷蘭黃金時代靜物畫家 Rachel Ruysch (1664 - 1750)

Rachel Reich was born June 3, 1664, died October 12, 1750, was a Dutch still life painter from the Northern Netherlands. She specialized in flowers, inventing her own style and achieving international fame in her lifetime. Due to a long and successful career that spanned over six decades, she became the best documented woman painter of the Dutch Golden Age. Reich had a very good understanding of drawing and the techniques of earlier traditions. This knowledge improved her painting abilities. Stylistically, her artwork, with its playful composition and brilliant colors, was part of the Rococo movement. She paid extensive attention to all details in her work. Every petal was created painstakingly with delicate brushwork. The background of Reich's paintings are usually dark which was the fashion for flower painting in the second half of the 17th century. Her asymmetrical compositions with drooping flowers and wild stems created paintings that seemed to possess a great energy about them. In her early work Reich painted a large number of forest floor pictures that feature small animals, reptiles, butterflies, and fungi. She later adopted flower painting as her main concern and continued to paint until her death, thus continuing the 17th century style right down to the middle of the following century.