Blanc has most sympathetically described her qualities. He says:
Her Truthfulness to Nature.—"Whether she is painting the flowers of the gardens or those of the field, which she groups so beautifully on marble tables and calls around them fluttering butterflies and droning bees, or beautiful ripe fruits that refresh the eyes and mind, Rachel is always truthful, graceful, and clever. A colorist, she frankly selects the brightest tones and combines them marvellously; a draughtsman, she reproduces splendidly the most complicated forms, while preserving to each plant its individual elegance, its aspect, its way of holding itself, and foreshortening."
Her Love of Nature.—"In all justice, therefore, the Dutch rank Rachel Ruijsch among their most excellent painters. She retained her love of nature in all its freshness; it even seems as if she had a weakness for rustic beauty, and that she found the same pleasure in wandering about the country that others have in gardens and greenhouses. Sometimes she even mingles thistles with her field flowers, which she carelessly throws on a table; sometimes she chooses an old tree-trunk overgrown with moss, upon which she places her bunch of spring blossoms, while the insects hum around them, and the wings of a beetle gleam through the shadow. Sometimes she brings a green frog from some pool in the neighboring meadow and gives him a place in her picture. In the infinite little world of great nature Rachel finds no creature unworthy of her brush—not even the snail that crawls on the leaf and is hunted away by the gardener, nor the little worm who moves his variegated rings and spins his thread, destined to clothe magnificent ladies, as he elevates himself into the air. Those insects that we deem vile she honors in her paintings: she lets them lie on her marble tables, crawl on the stem of the glass in which her peonies and pinks are arranged; and she even allows them to devour the plums and grapes of her picturesque collations. Nothing, however, is more charming than her birds' nests, lined with lightest down and tiny blades of grass, moss, and straw, expressed with the art and industry of a wren or a tomtit."
The larger picture in The Hague Gallery is a charming group of roses and tulips, with butterflies and insects.
Rachel Ruijsch was a pupil of Willem van Aelst (1626-83?), whose Flowers (dated 1663) and Still Life (dated 1671) hang in The Hague Gallery.
Description of One of Willem van Aelst's Pictures.—M. de Burtin has described a picture by Willem van Aelst which gives an idea of all the works of this master:
"A table covered with a crimson velvet carpet bordered with golden fringe, on which stands a drinking-vessel of antique shape half filled with Rhine wine. The sides of this glass cup reflect several times and in different views the street with the most magical and astounding way, and in the very centre you see the reflection of the painter himself, holding his palette. On one side of the cup are placed, on a glass dish, four superb peaches and some roasted chestnuts; on the other side are bunches of red and white grapes. Butterflies and other insects add to the illusion, and the vine and peach leaves are artistically used to decorate the beautiful pyramidal group that stands out from a looped-back curtain of brownish yellow."
Resemblance of his Work to that of Van Huysum.—Although his name is less celebrated than that of Van Huysum, Willem Aelst is not very far removed from him in his beautiful productions; and certainly he surpasses Evert van Aelst (1602-58) who was his uncle and master. Without carrying finish to excess and preserving a certain freedom of touch, he knows how to express marvellously the delicate wings of a butterfly, the down of a peach, the dewdrops on a bunch of grapes, the feathers of a dead bird, and the wrinkles of a game-pouch.
In Favor with Princes and Cardinals.—Many of his works are in France, where he spent four years, and in Italy, where he lived seven years filling orders for princes and cardinals. He was only thirty years old when he returned to his native town, Delft; but he removed to Amsterdam, where his works brought high prices.
His Favorite Subjects.—The pictures by him representing dead birds are, as respects picturesque arrangement, finely balanced harmony of cool but transparent color, perfect nature in every detail, and delicate, soft treatment, admirable types of the perfection of the Dutch School. Specimens of this class are a picture in the Munich Gallery of two dead partridges and instruments of the chase, and another in the Berlin Museum signed "W. v. Aelst, 1653," representing a marble table with two woodcocks and other small birds, and two French partridges suspended above. His favorite subjects, however, were fruit and other eatables, herrings, oysters, bread, etc., with glasses and gorgeous vessels in gold and silver. Although Willem van Aelst owed much to his uncle Evert van Aelst, so famous for his dead birds and instruments of the chase, perhaps he owed still more to his other teacher, Otho Marcellis van Schrieck (1613-73), who acquired celebrity, excelling in a singular branch of art. He painted the humblest creatures,—frogs, snails, lizards, worms, serpents, and curious plants. The name of his master is unknown; but he painted entirely from nature and is said to have kept a kind of museum of serpents, vipers, insects and other curiosities. These he studied with great attention, and drew them with extraordinary fidelity and care, reproducing also their glowing and metallic hues.