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2025-09-06 00:45:11 UTC

Hotspur🏳️‍🌈🇺🇦 on Nostr: "Still Life with Flowers and Butterflies," Maria van Oosterwijck, 1668. Van ...

"Still Life with Flowers and Butterflies," Maria van Oosterwijck, 1668.

Van Oosterwijck (1630-93) was a Dutch Golden Age painter of florals and still lifes. She was a significant painter for her time, in part because she was also a crafty businesswoman who marketed her paintings to various noble houses, generating quite a demand.

Historians are sometimes unkind to her; she never married, but raised an orphaned nephew, and taught one of her servants to paint and to be self-sufficient. As she never married she's sometimes seen as "incomplete" while fellow painter Rachel Ruysch, who married and raised ten children, is usually depicted very sympathetically.

I like to think of her as a dedicated professional, taking joy in her art and in her autonomy, as one of the few women who were professional artists at the time. I love that she elevated one of her servants to be her own person. Not many upper-class women would do that.

Happy Flower Friday!

From the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne.

#Art #MariaVanOosterwijck #DutchGoldenAge #FlowerFriday #StillLife #WomenArtists