The first monograph in over 70 years on the celebrated female protagonist of Dutch floral painting.

At the end of the 17th century and beginning of the 18th, Rachel Ruysch was celebrated across Europe for her sumptuous floral still lifes, admired both for their artistry and for their accurate depictions of flowers, fruit and insects. Often placed on stone ledges and against dark backgrounds, her sumptuous bouquets seem to spill over with all manner of colorful flowers and plants, as bees and butterflies flit to and from their petals. Ruysch’s star faded after the close of the Dutch Golden Age, but late 20th- and early 21st-century interest in women artists has returned her to the forefront of the art historical canon. Hardcover, 224 pages.