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Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy
‐
Historian of Indian art who was involved in establishing the India Society in London
Other names
AKC
Place of birth
Date of arrival to Britain
Place of death
Needham, Massachusetts, US
About
Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy was the son of Sir Mutu Coomaraswamy, from Ceylon, and his wife Elizabeth Clay Beeby, from Kent. Coomaraswamy joined Wycliffe College in Gloucestershire in 1889 and then studied botany at University College, London, graduating in 1900. He married Ethel Mary Partridge in 1902 and worked for the Mineralogical Survey in Ceylon from 1903 to 1906.
In 1910 Coomaraswamy was involved in the formation of the India Society in London – a society dedicated to promoting Indian art. He wrote a number of pamphlets on Indian art and in 1917 took up a position as Research Fellow in Indian, Persian and Muhammadan Art at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.
In 1912 he divorced his first wife. His second wife was Alice Richardson, a performer of Indian music. His third wife was the American artist Stella Bloch, but this marriage was short-lived.
Festival of Empire, 1911
Laurence Binyon, Stella Bloch (third wife), Walter Crane, Eric Gill, E. B. Havell, Christiana Herringham (India Society), Ethel Mary Mairet (first wife), Margaret Noble, A. R. Orage, Alice Richardson (second wife), T. W. Rolleston (India Society), William Rothenstein, M. J. Tambimuttu (nephew).
The Deeper Meaning of the Struggle (Broad Campden: Essex House Press, 1907)
The Aims of Indian Art (Broad Campden: Essex House Press, 1908)
The Influence of Greek on Indian Art (Broad Campden: Essex House Press, 1908)
Medieval Sinhalese Art (Broad Campden: Essex House Press, 1908)
The Indian Craftsman (London: Probsthain & Co., 1909)
The Oriental View of Women (Broad Campden: Essex House Press, 1909)
Indian Drawings (London: India Society, 1912)
(with M. E. Noble) Myths of the Hindus and Buddhists (London: George Harrap, 1913)
Buddha and the Gospel of Buddhism (London: Harrap, 1916)
Dance of Siva (New York: Simpkin, Marshall, 1924)
Figures of Speech or Figures of Thought (London: Luzac, 1946)
The Bugbear of Literacy (London: Dennis Dobson, 1949)
Coatts, Margot, ‘Mairet, Ethel Mary (1872–1952)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, 2007) [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/39639]
Lipsey, Roger, Coomaraswamy, 3 vols (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1977)
Livingston, Ray, The Traditional Theory of Literature (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1962)
Mitter, Partha, Much Maligned Monsters: History of European Reactions to Indian Art (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977)
Seaman, G. R., 'Coomaraswamy, Ananda Kentish (1877–1947)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, 2004) [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/55201]
India Society Archives, Mss Eur F147, Asian and African Studies Reading Room, British Library, St Pancras
Letters and notebooks, Cambridge University Library, Cambridge
Stella Bloch Archive, MS Thr 460, Houghton Library, Harvard College Library, Boston
Correspondence and papers, Princeton University Library, Princeton, New Jersey
Stella Bloch Papers, CO822, Princeton University Library, Princeton, New Jersey
Papers and photos, William Morris Hunt Memorial Library, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Image credit
Wikimedia Commons
