Tree of Life, part of a devotional oil lamp
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Art of Greater India, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, California, March 1-April 16, 1950, no. 71.
Hindu Sculpture, Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Minnesota, January 25-March 2, 1952, no cat.
Bronzes of India and Greater India, The Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, November 2-30, 1955, no. 74 as Sun Tree.
Indian Paintings: Eleventh to Twentieth Century, New York, China House, May 3-May 25, 1956, no. 76.
Art in Asia and the West, San Francisco Museum of Art, October 28-December 1, 1957, no. 4s.
Master Bronzes of India, The Art Institute of Chicago, September 3-October 10, 1965; The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri, October 21-November 30, 1965; The Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio, January 18-February 27, 1966; Asia House Gallery, New York, October 12-December 11, 1966, no. 61 as Tree of Life and Knowledge.The meaning and function of this unique sculpture have puzzled scholars for decades. The sculpture depicts a blooming tree that hosts 14 geese on its branches. At the top of its stem, a rearing five-headed naga (cobra) sits above a lotus flower. A pair of monkeys clings to its trunk and two cows rest at its base.
This may represent the archetypical Tree of Life, or a specific sacred tree from ancient India. The animal imagery may also relate to the Hindu cowherd god Krishna, who is frequently depicted in a grove beneath a blooming tree. This enigmatic work may have served as the back of an altar featuring a sculpture of Krishna. The stout, curving bodies of the geese are reminiscent of art from the Deccan Plateau in south-central India.
With C. T. Loo & Co., New York, stock no. NYJ-7, by November 1940-1941 [1];
Purchased from C. T. Loo & Co. by The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, 1941.
[1] C. T. Loo/Frank Caro archive, Musée Guimet, Paris, copy of stock card in Nelson-Atkins curatorial files.
The William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, The William Rockhill Nelson Collection, 3rd ed. (Kansas City, MO: William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 1949), 189, (repro.).
Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Art of Greater India: 3000 B.C.-2800 A.D., edited by Henry Trubner, exh. cat. (Los Angeles, CA: Los Angeles County Museum, 1950), 41-2, plate 71, (repro.).
Stella Kramrisch, The Art of India: Traditions of Indian Sculpture, Painting, and Architecture. (New York: Phaidon Publishers, Inc., 1954), plate 156, (repro.).
Rhode Island School of Design. Bronzes of India and Greater India; an Exhibition Held the 2 till the 30 November, 1955 (Providence, Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, 1955), 17, fig. 74, 20, (repro.).
Chinese Art Society of America, Indian Paintings: Eleventh to Twentieth Century, exh. cat. (New York: Chinese Art Society of America, 1956), 14.
Gerald Heard, “A Map of Man’s Mind,” in New York Times (April 7, 1957): 255, (repro.).
“Indian Sculpture in Bronze,” in The William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts Gallery News 24, no. 9 (June-July 1957).
San Francisco Museum of Art, Art in Asia and the West, exh. cat. (San Francisco, California: H. S. Crocker Co., Inc., 1957), 17, 31, (repro.).
Ethel E. Ewing, Our Widening World: A History of the World’s Peoples (New York: Rand McNally and Company, 1958), 141, (repro.).
William Theodore de Bary, et al., Sources of Indian Tradition (New York: Columbia University Press, 1958), (repro.).
Ross E. Taggart, ed., Handbook of the Collections in the William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 4th ed. (Kansas City, MO: William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 1959), 219, (repro.).
Eloise Spaeth, American Art Museums and Galleries: An Introduction to Looking. (New York: Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1960), 157, (repro.).
Alan W. Watts, The Two Hands of God: They Myths of Polarity (New York: George Braziller, 1963), plate 15, (repro.).
Art Institute of Chicago, Master Bronzes of India, exh. cat. (Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago, 1965), unpaginated, no. 61, (repro.).
Direnda Sharma, “Of Love and Pride,” in New York Times (November 27, 1966): BR37, (repro.).
M. Fairbanks Marcus, “Master Bronzes of India: the Expanding Horizon of Indian Bronzes,” Oriental Art New Series, XII, no. 1 (Spring 1966): 92, fig. 10, (repro.).
Pratapaditya Pal, “The Rich Variety of the Indian Bronze,” Apollo, 97 (March 1973): 80-81, fig. 12, (repro.).
Ross E. Taggart and George L. McKenna, eds., Handbook of the Collections in The William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, Kansas City, Missouri, vol. 2, Art of the Orient, 5th ed. (Kansas City, MO: William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 1973), 141, (repro.).
Eloise Spaeth, American Art Museums and Galleries (New York: Harper and Brothers Publishing, 1960), 157, (repro.).
Ellen R. Goheen, The Collections of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1988), 212, 217, (repro.).
Terma Company, The Box: Remembering the Gift (Santa Fe, New Mexico: Terma Co. 1992), 37, (repro.).
Roger Ward and Patricia J. Fidler, eds., The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art: A Handbook of the Collection (New York: Hudson Hills Press, in association with Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 1993), 387, (repro.).
George Michell, “Architecture and art of Southern India: Vijayanagara and the Successor States” in The New Cambridge History of India I:6 (Cambridge: University of Cambridge, 1995), 218, fig. 160, (repro.).
Deborah Emont Scott, ed., The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art: A Handbook of the Collection, 7th ed. (Kansas City, MO: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2008), 272, fig. 45, (repro.).
Carol Radcliffe Bolon, "The Nelson-Atkins Museum's "Tree of Life" and the Art of Kerala's Oil Lamps," Artibus Asiae, Vol. LXXXI, No. 1, 2021, pp. 5-24
