A Scene from the Life of the Buddha
Kushan Sculpture: Images from Early India, The Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio, November 12, 1985-January 5, 1986; The Asia Society Galleries, New York, February 13-April 6, 1986; Seattle Art Museum, Washington, May 13-July 13, 1986, cat. no. 106 as Worship of Buddha.
This deeply sculpted relief represents a Buddha standing to the right of a curving river, which bisects the scene. He is being honored by a kneeling figure to the left, while another offers him food. Monks and men stand to either side, several displaying emotional reactions to the Buddha’s arrival. The muscular warrior on the right is Vajrapani, a traditional attendant to a Buddha.
Gandharan sculpture from this period is characterized by its transformation and abstraction of Greek and Roman artistic styles. The naturalistic treatment of the figures’ features and bodies, and the Buddha’s toga-like robe demonstrate the strong influence of Hellenistic and Roman art on this sculpture.
With Heeramaneck Galleries, New York, by 1955;
Purchased from Heeramaneck Galleries by The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, 1955.
“New Acquisition,” in The William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts Gallery News 23, no. 7 (April 1956), (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), 221, (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), 117, (repro.).
Alice N. Heeramaneck, Masterpieces of Indian Sculpture from the Former Collections of Nasli M. Heeramaeck (New York: Alice N. Heeramaneck, 1979), unpaginated, no. 9, plate 9, (repro.).
Stanislaw J. Czuma, and Rekha Morris, Kushan Sculpture: Images from Early India, exh. cat. (Cleveland: The Cleveland Museum of Art/Indiana University Press, 1985), 194-95, (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), 374, (repro.).
Takeuchi Yoshinori, ed., Buddhist Spirituality: Indian, Southeast Asian, Tibetan, and Early Chinese (New York: The Crossroad Publishing Company, 1993), 15, fig. 2, (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), 257, (repro.).
Kimberly Masteller, “Arthur Upham Pope and Collecting Persian Art for Kansa City,” in Arthur Upham Pope and A New Survey of Persian Art (Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 2016), fig. 10.1, (repro.).
Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art and Kimberly Masteller, Masterworks from India and Southeast Asia: the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art (Kanas City, Missouri: The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in association with University of Washington Press, 2016), 28-29, (repro.).
Yuka Kadoi, ed., Arthur Upham Pope and a New Survey of Persian Art, vol. 10, Studies in Persian Cultural History (Leiden: Brill, 2016), (repro.).
