{
"data": {
"id": 155843,
"accession_number": "1991.148",
"share_license_status": "Copyrighted",
"tombstone": "Kuvera, King of the Yakshas, before 1947. Ananda K. Coomaraswamy (Sri Lankan, 1877\u20131947). Ink on paper. The Cleveland Museum of Art, In memory of Evelyn Svec Ward, gift of her husband, William E. Ward, 1991.148",
"current_location": null,
"title": "Kuvera, King of the Yakshas",
"creation_date": "before 1947",
"creation_date_earliest": 1907,
"creation_date_latest": 1947,
"artists_tags": [
"male"
],
"culture": [
"Ceylon"
],
"technique": "Ink on paper",
"support_materials": [],
"department": "Drawings",
"collection": "DR - Misc. Countries",
"type": "Drawing",
"dimensions": {},
"state_of_the_work": null,
"edition_of_the_work": null,
"copyright": null,
"inscriptions": [],
"exhibitions": {
"current": [
{
"id": 311486,
"title": "Signs of Affection: Gifts Honoring the Museum's 75th Anniversary",
"description": "Signs of Affection: Gifts Honoring the Museum's 75th Anniversary. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (October 27, 1992-January 3, 1993).",
"opening_date": "1992-10-27T05:00:00"
},
{
"id": 293147,
"title": "Indian Gallery 242 Rotation \u2013 April-November 2017",
"description": "Indian Gallery 242 Rotation \u2013 April-November 2017. The Cleveland Museum of Art (organizer) (April 10-November 6, 2017).",
"opening_date": "2017-04-10T04:00:00"
}
],
"legacy": []
},
"provenance": [
{
"description": "William E. Ward [1922-2004], Solon, OH, given to the Cleveland Museum of Art",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": [],
"date": "?-1991",
"sortorder": 1
},
{
"description": "The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": [],
"date": "1991-",
"sortorder": 2
}
],
"find_spot": null,
"related_works": [],
"former_accession_numbers": [],
"did_you_know": null,
"description": "This drawing is based on a sculpture from the Buddhist site of Bharhut in north-central India. The sculptures of Bharhut were carved around 150 BC and are among the earliest examples of Buddhist relief sculpture.
Kuvera, also known as Kubera, is the name of the god of wealth. He is a leader of the yakshas, nature divinities who embody the life-giving forces of nature that produce abundance and, by extension, grant wealth and prosperity. Here he presses his hands together in adoration of the Buddha. The stiff, even lines reflect the carving style of the Bharhut sculptures.",
"external_resources": {
"wikidata": [
"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q79944340"
],
"internet_archive": []
},
"citations": [
{
"citation": "Turner, Evan H. \u201cThe Year in Review for 1992.\u201d The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 80, no. 2 (February 1993): 38\u201379.",
"page_number": "Mentioned: p. 71",
"url": "http://www.jstor.org/stable/25161388"
}
],
"url": "https://clevelandart.org/art/1991.148",
"images": {},
"alternate_images": [],
"creditline": "In memory of Evelyn Svec Ward, gift of her husband, William E. Ward",
"image_credit": null,
"sketchfab_id": null,
"sketchfab_url": null,
"gallery_donor_text": null,
"athena_id": 155843,
"creators": [
{
"id": 328,
"description": "Ananda K. Coomaraswamy (Sri Lankan, 1877\u20131947)",
"extent": null,
"qualifier": null,
"role": "artist",
"biography": "Ananda K. Coomaraswamy (Sri Lankan, 1877\u20131947)
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.",
"name_in_original_language": null,
"birth_year": "1877",
"death_year": "1947",
"use_in_caption": true,
"include_extent": false,
"weight": 1
}
],
"legal_status": "accessioned",
"accession_date": "1991-09-23T00:00:00",
"sortable_date": 1907,
"date_added_to_oa": null,
"date_text": "before 1947",
"collapse_artists": false,
"on_loan": false,
"recently_acquired": false,
"record_type": "object",
"conservation_statement": null,
"has_conservation_images": false,
"cover_accession_number": null,
"is_nazi_era_provenance": false,
"impression": null,
"alternate_titles": [],
"is_highlight": false,
"updated_at": "2026-03-27 00:08:06.623000"
}
}