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The Documentary Podcast

A Flower Painting by Rachel Ruysch

The Documentary Podcast

BBC

Society & Culture, Documentary, Personal Journals

4.32.6K Ratings

🗓️ 12 October 2016

⏱️ 27 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

What's hiding in the undergrowth of Rachel Ruysch's bold and beautiful flower painting? This is a world where buds hiss like snakes, poppies twirl and tiny insects devour - a vibrant, fecund jungle, full of uncanny life. Cathy FitzGerald hears how this great Dutch artist was influenced by her unusual childhood as the daughter of Frederik Ruysch, maker of one of the world's great curiosity cabinets.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

A recent study found the average time people look at an artwork in a gallery is half a minute.

0:07.0

We like to take a little longer over a single painting, half an hour, and if you've got a computer, tablet or phone handy, you can too.

0:16.4

I'm Kathy Fitzgerald and this is moving pictures, a three-part series on the BBC World Service.

0:24.0

Today's painting has a catchy title.

0:29.0

Roses, convuls, popppies and other flowers in an urn on a stone ledge.

0:37.0

It was painted in the 1680s, but one of the greatest artists you've probably never heard of, the Dutch flower painter Rachel

0:44.8

Rauch.

0:46.2

It hangs in the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington.

0:50.6

You can find a link to the painting on the Moving Pictures page of the BBC World Service website.

0:56.0

Follow it and you'll be taken to an incredibly high resolution photo of the work made by Google Arts and Culture.

1:03.0

Click on the image and you'll be able to zoom in and in and in to examine every detail.

1:10.0

Look at the painted patterns on a butterfly's wing, the tiny stamens in the black heart of a

1:16.0

poppy, the sharp bloodred thorns on a rose. National Museum of Women in the Arts Curator Virginia Trainer, Dutch Garden Historian, Ereichter Young, an art historian Marion Barady, take a look.

1:30.0

It's hard to call something like this a still life when it seems like there's so much energy in it.

1:37.0

A squat, brown, terracotta vase stands on a shelf.

1:42.0

Looping and turning stems and vines.

1:45.0

It's full of flowers.

1:47.0

Flowers facing front, flowers facing backwards.

1:51.0

Far more than it could hold in real life. There's so much going on in this painting. I don't quite know where to start.

1:57.0

There is one central flower that almost takes all the attention.

2:02.0

The peony. almost takes all the attention.

2:03.0

The peony.

...

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