A Year for Dutch and Flemish Women Artists, 2025-2026

History’s Dutch and Flemish women artists are having a moment! Currently there are at least three art exhibitions focused on early modern female makers of the Low Countries. Three of these shows incorporate an international traveling component. In addition, Dutch women artists and Flemish women artist feature in books, auctions, and acquisitions news. We also highlight some museum-store quality gifts to do with this theme. Check the final segment of this post for a special discount offer—just in time for the holiday season.

Special art exhibitions

Women Artists from Antwerp to Amsterdam, 1600–1750

Women Artists from Antwerp to Amsterdam, 1600–1750 showcases the work of forty Dutch and Flemish women artists. The makers include Gesina ter Borch, Maria Faydherbe, Anna Maria de Koker, Judith Leyster, Magdalena van de Passe, Clara Peeters, Maria Tassaert, Maria Schalcken, Jeanne Vergouwen, Michaelina Wautier, Rachel Ruysch, among others. The show resents an array of paintings, lace, prints, paper cuttings, embroidery, and sculpture. It draws on recent scholarship to demonstrate that a full view of women’s contributions to the artistic economy is essential to understanding Dutch and Flemish visual culture of the period.

The exhibition runs at the National Museum of Women in the Arts through January 11, 2026. Then it opens at the MSK Gent as Unforgettable: Women Artists from Antwerp to Amsterdam, 1600–1750, where it will be on display from March 7 through May 31, 2026.

Michaelina Wautier: Painter

A 17th-century artist from Brussels, Michaelina Wautier was exceptional in every respect. She painted not only flowers, but also portraits, scenes of everyday life, religious themes, and mythological pictures in both small and large formats. The variety of her iconography suggests an outstanding intellectual education. The superiority of her style hints at excellent artistic training. In an era when many woman artists worked primarily in still lifes or genre painting, Wautier also gained recognition for her ambitious history paintings. The exhibition offers a contemporary female perspective on both traditional and innovative pictorial themes and the male body.

Michaelina Wautier: Painter is on display at the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna through February 22, 2026. Next spring it moves to London’s Royal Academy, where it goes on view as Michaelina Wautier from March 27 to June 21, 2026.

Rachel Ruysch: Artist, Naturalist, and Pioneer

The first comprehensive solo exhibition dedicated to the artist, Rachel Ruysch: Artist, Naturalist, and Pioneer at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston is the third iteration of a three-venue traveling show. Previously it appeared as Rachel Ruysch: Nature into Art, first at Alte Pinakothek and then at the Toledo Museum of Art. The Boston exhibition brings together 35 of the artist’s finest paintings from museums and private lenders across the United States and Europe alongside plant and insect specimens as well as work by other female artists, including Anna Ruysch, Maria Sibylla Merian, and Alida Withoos. Seeing these provocative juxtapositions, visitors can gain insight into the central role women played in the production of scientific knowledge in Europe during the 17th and 18th centuries.

Gesina & Being Seen

After spending centuries in the shadow of her famous family, Gesina ter Borch is finally stepping into the spotlight. At Academiehuis Grote Kerk Zwolle, in Gesina & Being Seen, the Dutch 17th-century artist takes center stage in the layered, image-rich exhibition by contemporary artist Jasper Abels that brings her voice, vision and emotional world to life. Collages, film, fashion, installations and hidden keyholes reimagine the unseen voice of Gesina ter Borch; a 17th-century female artist brought into the light.

A Feast of Fruit and Flowers: Women Still Life Painters of the Seventeenth Century and Beyond

A Feast of Fruit and Flowers at The Hyde Collection explores the significant contributions made by women artists to the development of the still life genre in 17th-century Europe. Although this exhibition does not focus exclusively on Dutch and Flemish women artists, it includes paintings by Clara Peeters, Maria Sibylla Merian, Johanna Helena Herolt, Maria van Oosterwijck, Isabella Peeters, and Rachel Ruysch.

Books

The last 12 months has seen a proliferation of new books about Dutch and Flemish women artists. One of PEOPLE’s September 2025 “best books” picks is I Am You, a novel in which 17th-century Dutch flower painter Maria van Oosterwijck is a protagonist. There are also catalogs for some of the exhibitions mentioned above, and beautifully illustrated volumes about individual female art makers of the Low Countries.

Exhibition catalogs:

Rachel Ruysch: Nature into Art introduces today’s audiences to Ruysch’s achievements and explore the pioneering roles of women artists and scientists in the Dutch Republic in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

Michaelina Wautier brings together all the latest scholarship on the artist, alongside several exciting new attributions. It is available in German as well as English.

From painting and sculpture to lace-making, paper-cutting, and botanical illustration, Unforgettable: Women Artists from Antwerp to Amsterdam, 1600–1750 celebrates the rich talents of more than fifty women artists.

Monographs

New in the book series Illuminating Women Artists are three new books about individual Dutch and Flemish women practitioners of art:

Gesina ter Borch is the first major biographical account of one of the Dutch woman artist. It highlights Ter Borch’s watercolors and calligraphy, and her work as an art teacher, an archivist, and an artist’s model.

Clara Peeters discusses the artist’s biography as far as scholars have been able to uncover it. It examines the historical and cultural context of Peeters’ art, her artistry, and the material culture reflected in her paintings.

Maria Sibylla Merian is the first study to consider Merian’s art and art-historical significance: her artistic range; her techniques; the rich visual rhetoric she deployed in her works; and her innovations. It uses Merian’s hundreds of extant watercolors and book illustrations as sources, situating Merian’s artistic contributions in their socio-cultural and creative context.

A fourth book in the series, Michaelina Wautier, is forthcoming in March 2026. Getty Publications is the North American co-publisher of the Illuminating Women Artists series.

Auction

Artworks by early modern women aren’t exactly common; they don’t come up for auction every day. But they do materialize on the market occasionally. In the past year, these paintings by Flemish women artists have made an appearance:

Aguttes sold Two floral still lifes, by 17th-century Flemish painter Catarina Ykens II, for €91,000. The result far exceeded the pre-sale estimate of €4,000–6,000.
At a Koller auction, Clara Peeters’ Still life with fish, prawns and oysters, went for CHF 70,000.
This fall at the Dutch art fair PAN, Kunsthandel P. de Boer is displaying another Clara Peeters painting: Fruitbasket and covered glass goblet.

*Two floral still lifes*, 17th-century, Catarina Ykens II; Nivaagaards Malerisamling

Acquisitions

Sometimes the auctioned works become the property of private collectors. But sometimes, as in these cases, they go to public collections:

Denmark’s Nivaagaard Collection now owns Two floral still lifes, the set of Catarina Ykens II paintings mentioned above.

The Rijksmuseum announced its acquisition of Vanitas Still Life, by Maria van Oosterwijck. It is the museum’s only painting by the artist; it is now on display in the Gallery of Honour.

Copenhagen’s Statens Museum for Kunst now owns the Clara Peeters painting Still Life with a Peregrine Falcon and Birds.

*Still Life with a Peregrine Falcon and Birds*, 1615, by Clara Peeters; Statens Museum for Kunst

Museum quality gifts

The Maria Sibylla Merian Collection from ART IS reproduces elements of the artist’s Poppy Danish Flag and Campanula. (ART IS is a woman-owned creative and product development agency based in Brooklyn, NY.) The Merian merch includes an umbrella, a tote bag, a pen/stylus, a shopper tote, a canvas tote, a pillow cover, and more. Look for this line in the shops at the National Museum of Women in the Arts; the Smithsonian Natural History Museum; Newfields; and the Getty.

Shop the Rachel Ruysch exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. The museum’s store has assembled a variety of Ruysch-themed merchandise, including pillows, a purse mirror, housewares, a spiral notebook, and more.

And of course, Art Herstory’s stationery line is rich in cards that reproduce the art of Dutch and Flemish women artists! Our line includes:

Note card wallets containing eight note cards (four each of two designs) featuring works by Clara Peeters, Judith Leyster, Maria Sibylla Merian, and Rachel Ruysch;

Two different sampler 6-packs with a mix of artists and artworks: Dutch and Flemish Women Artists 1 and Dutch and Flemish Women Artists 2;

Individual cards featuring art by Alida Withoos, Anna Ruysch, Clara Peeters, Dorothea Storm-Kreps, Judith Leyster, Maria Schalcken, Maria Sibylla Merian, and Rachel Ruysch.

To celebrate this special year of Dutch and Flemish women artists, Art Herstory offers all related products at a 35% discount. We look forward to fulfilling your order!

A Year for Dutch and Flemish Women Artists