Rachel Ruysch: A Master of Floral Delicacy

Rachel Ruysch - Flowers, Fruit, and Insects - 1716 - Oil on canvas, 89 x 60 cm - Galleria Palatina (Palazzo Pitti), Florence (click photo for larger image)Jan van Huysum - Fruit and Flowers - c. 1720 - Oil on panel, 81 x 60 cm - Wallace Collection, London. Notice the lighter background in this work. (click photo for larger image)Rachel Ruysch (1664-1750) was a Dutch still-life painter who, with Jan van Huysum (1642-1749), also featured here, was the most celebrated exponent of flower pieces of her period. The daughter of a botanist and the pupil of artist Willem van Aelst, she worked mainly in her native Amsterdam, but also in The Hague (1701-08) and Düsseldorf, where from 1708 to 1716 she was court painter to the Elector Palatine.

Her richly devised bouquets were painted in delicate colors with meticulous detail, and their artistry and craftsmanship are worthy of the finest tradition of Dutch flower painting. She continued to use the dark backgrounds characteristic of Van Aelst and the older generation long after Van Huysum and other contemporaries had gone over to light backgrounds.

Ruysch lived eighty-five years and her dated works establish that she painted from the time she was a young woman until she was an octogenarian. However, only about a hundred paintings by her are known. Possibly she worked slowly, however as the wife of a portraitist, Juriaen Pool (1666-1745), and the mother of ten children, she may also have had a limited amount of time for painting!

Elisabetta Sirani: A Talent Gone Far Too Soon

Elisabetta Sirani - Virgin and Child - 1663 - Oil on canvas, 86 x 70 cm - National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington (click photo for larger image)Elisabetta Sirani - Portrait of Beatrice Cenci - c. 1662 - Oil on canvas, 64,5 x 49 cm - Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica, Rome (click photo for larger image)Elisabetta Sirani (1638-1665) was an Italian Baroque painter, daughter of Giovanni Andrea Sirani, who had been the principal assistant of the master Guido Reni. Her talent was encouraged by the writer Malvasia, who later wrote an adulatory biography of her in his 'Felsina Pittrice' (1678). Sirani was active by 1655, and by 1662 she had recorded about ninety works, executing at least another eighty before she died at the tender age of twenty-seven. Only a scant few of her portraits has survived. Her religious, mythological and allegorical subjects were painted in full view of a crowd of admirers. Her style is close to that of Reni - idealized, affecting, and somewhat sentimental, but them embody a strong chiaroscuro and fine color. Her sisters Anna Maria (1645-1515), and Barbara (alive in 1678) were also painters. Barbara's portrait of Elisabetta is in Bologna. At age twenty-seven, Elisabetta Sirani came down with an unexplained illness, accompanied by weight loss and depression. Although she continued to work, she remained ill from the spring through the summer, and died in August--at age twenty-seven. Bologna gave her a large and elegant public funeral. Elisabetta Sirani's father blamed her maid for poisoning her Her body was exhumed and the cause of death was determined to be a perforated stomach--what we would deem as gastric ulcers today. Where might her at have taken her?

Tamara de Lempicka - In the Style of Noir

Tamara de Lempicka - Self-Portrait in the Green Bugatti, 1925, oil on wood, private collection (click photo for larger image)Tamara de Lempicka - Portrait of Tadeusz de Lempicki (Portrait of the Artist's Husband), unfinished, 1928, oil on canvas, Musée National d'Art Moderne, ParisPolish American painter Tamara de Lempicka (1898-1980) is best known for her Art Deco-styled portraits. Sexy, bedroom-eyed women in stylish dress are rendered in haunting poses--and her compositions are not unlike those found on the Film Noir movie posters of the period. She studied painting at the Academe de la Grand Chaumiere, and was privately tutored by artist Maurice Denis.

In 1925, she exhibited her works at the first Art Deco show in Paris. She moved to America in 1939 and her works appeared exclusively at many galleries and museums.

In 1960, she changed her style to abstract art and began creating works with a spatula. But this wasn’t what the public wanted from Lempicka. After her husband died in 1962, she stopped painting altogether and moved to Mexico. Tamara was "the first woman artist to be a glamour star" - as can be seen in her photograph here. Her distinctive and bold artistic style developed quickly and epitomized the cool yet sensual side of the Art Deco movement.

Tamara de Lempicka is one of my favorite painters--but I doubt that she would have been one of my favorite people! She was notoriously snobbish, selfish and difficult. She immortalized her daughter, Kizette, in painting more than once--but spent very little time with her. The child’s grandmother was so angry with Tamara at one point--for disappointing Kizette by not coming home for Christmas--that she burned Tamara’s entire collection of costly hats--while Kizette looked on!

American Contemporary Realist - Janet Fish

Janet Fish, Dog Days, 1993, oil on canvas, 46 in x 80 in, Seavest Collection of Contemporary RealismSoHo based artist Janet Fish (born 1938) hails from a family of artists. Although regarded as a realist, Fish’s work also embodies influences from the highly energetic Abstract Expressionism of early postmodernism. Here’s an excerpt from an essay by Virgina A Bonito, that aptly describes Fish’s work.

“In a poem titled “Adam’s Curse,” William Butler Yeats wrote of the task of writing poetry:

 A line will take us hours maybe;

 Yet if it does not seem a moment's thought,

 Our stitching and unstitching has been naught.

If we apply that measure of success to the visual arts, we can find in the best of Janet Fish the perfection of the dictum....”

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Marie Louise Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun (1755-1842)

Marie Louise Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun, Self-Portrait in a Straw Hat, after 1782, oil on canvas, 98 x 70 cm, National Gallery, London (click photo for larger image)One of the most successful of all women artists, Vigée-Lebrun was a French painter particularly noted for her portraits of women. Her father was Louis Vigée, a pastel portraitist and her first teacher. She studied later with a number of well-known painters, among them Jean-Baptiste Greuze and Joseph Vernet.

In 1776 she married a picture dealer, J.-B.-P. Lebrun. Her great opportunity came in 1779 when she was summoned to Versailles to paint a portrait of Queen Marie-Antoinette. The two women became friends, and in subsequent years Vigée-Lebrun painted at least 25 portraits of Marie-Antoinette in a great variety of poses and costumes; a number of these may be seen in the museum at Versailles.