id: 108656 accession number: 1926.35 share license status: Copyrighted url: https://clevelandart.org/art/1926.35 updated: 2024-03-26 01:57:07.007000 Reclining Nude Woman, early 1900s. Ananda K. Coomaraswamy (Sri Lankan, 1877–1947). Ink on paper; overall: 21.4 x 30.5 cm (8 7/16 x 12 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Gift of the Artist 1926.35 title: Reclining Nude Woman title in original language: series: series in original language: creation date: early 1900s creation date earliest: 1900 creation date latest: 1926 current location: creditline: Gift of the Artist copyright: --- culture: Ceylon technique: ink on paper department: Drawings collection: DR - Misc. Countries type: Drawing find spot: catalogue raisonne: --- CREATORS * Ananda K. Coomaraswamy (Sri Lankan, 1877–1947) - artist Ananda K. Coomaraswamy (Sri Lankan, 1877–1947)

Ananda Coomaraswamy was best known as a scholar and curator of Indian art. Following his studies at the University of London, he returned to Southeast Asia to head the Mineralogical Survey of Ceylon. He became fascinated with the traditional and ancient arts of his country and soon devoted himself to their study, publishing numerous books and articles over a long and distinguished career.

During the early 1920s Coomaraswamy became the first curator of Indian art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, where he assembled the first public collection of Indian art in the United States. He also was responsible for acquiring work by Alfred Stieglitz, whom he persuaded in 1924 to donate a group of 27 photographs. With this gift, the Museum of Fine Arts became one of the first major museums to include photography in its permanent collection.

Coomaraswamy was a photographer himself, documenting many works of Indian art. From around 1918 through the early 1930s, he took numerous landscape photographs, as well as many pictures of dancer Stella Bloch, whom he married in 1922. He exhibited his images in photographic salons in Toronto, as well as in Buffalo and Pittsburgh, and took part in the Third Annual International Exhibition of Pictorial Photography at the San Francisco Museum of Art in 1924.

Coomaraswamy was a member of the Pictorial Photographers of America, and in April 1925 presented a lecture on art and photography at the Clarence H. White School of Photography in New York. M.M. --- measurements: Overall: 21.4 x 30.5 cm (8 7/16 x 12 in.) state of the work: edition of the work: support materials: inscriptions: --- CURRENT EXHIBITIONS title: India's Art opening date: 1949-12-02T05:00:00 India's Art. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (December 2, 1949-January 22, 1950). title: Indian Gallery 242 Rotation – April-November 2017 opening date: 2017-04-10T04:00:00 Indian Gallery 242 Rotation – April-November 2017. The Cleveland Museum of Art (organizer) (April 10-November 6, 2017). --- LEGACY EXHIBITIONS --- PROVENANCE --- fun fact: digital description: wall description: --- RELATED WORKS --- CITATIONS --- IMAGES