Standing Buddha
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Art of Greater India, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, California, March 1-April 16, 1950, no. 56 as Standing Sakyamuni Buddha.
The Art of India, Farnsworth Art Museum, Wellesley College, MA, under the auspices of the Mayling Soong Foundation, April 18-May 15, 1953, no. 22 as Standing Sakyamuni Buddha.
Hellenistic Art in Asia: A Loan Exhibition, Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, December 28, 1954-February 15, 1955, no. 63 as Standing Figure of Sakyamuni.
The Evolution of the Buddha Image, The Asia Society Galleries, New York, May 6-June 30, 1963, no.14.
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. 3 as 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. 117 as Standing Sakyamuni.
This elegant Buddha, with right hand in the abhaya mudra (fear-not gesture), is one of only a few bronze sculptures that survive from the early years of India’s Gupta Dynasty. Notice the details evident in the sculpture, like the Buddha’s flaring nostrils, the creases in his hands and the finely drawn folds and hemline in his robes.
The inscription on the sculpture’s base reads:
"This is the pious gift of the lay-woman Bedika. Whatever merit there may be in this, let it be for the attainment of ultimate wisdom by [my] mother and father [and] by all beings."
Purchased by Dr. William Hoey (1849-1918), Oxford, England, by 1895;
By descent to Dr. J. T. S. Hoey (1895-1976), England, 1918-1944;
Purchased from Dr. J. T. S. Hoey, London, by Spink and Sons, London, by 1944;
Purchased from Spink and Sons by The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, 1944.
Vincent A. Smith and William Hoey, “Ancient Buddhist Statuettes and a Candella Copper-Plate from the Banda District,” in Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal 64 no. 1 (1895): 159-62, pl. 8, pl. 9, (repro.).
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), 184, (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), 34, plate 56 (repro.).
Fogg Art Museum, Helleninstic Art in Asia: A Loan Exhibition, exh. cat. (Cambridge: Fogg Art Museum, 1955), unpaginated.
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), 225, (repro.).
Benjamin Rowland, The Evolution of the Buddha Image, exh. cat. (New York: The Asia Society Galleries in association with Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1963), 53,131, (repro.).
Art Institute of Chicago and William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mart Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, Master Bronzes of India, exh. cat. (Chicago: The Art Institute of Chicago, 1965), unpaginated, (repro.).
M. Fairbanks Marcus, “Master Bronzes of India: The Expanding Horizon of Indian Bronzes,” Oriental Art, New Series v. 12, no. 1 (Spring 1966), 88, fig. 2, (repro.).
Pratapaditya Pal, “The Rich Variety of the Indian Bronze,” in Apollo, 97 (March 1973): 75, fig. 3 (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), 121, (repro.).
Pratapaditya Pal, Bronzes of Kashmir (New York: Hacker Art Books, 1975), 192-93, (repro.).
Pratapaditya Pal, The Ideal Image: The Gupta Sculptural Tradition and Its Influences, exh. cat. (New York, The Asia Society, Inc., 1978), 61, (repro.).
Karl Khandalavala, “The Chronology of the Arts of Nepal and Kashmir,” Lalit Kala 19 (1979): 42.
Stanislaw J. Czuma, and Rekha Morris, Kushan Sculpture: Images from Early India, exh. cat. (Cleveland: The Cleveland Museum of Art/Indiana University Press, 1985), 210-11, (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), 378, (repro.).
Sheila E. Hoey Middleton, “The Third Buddha,” in South Asian Studies 18 (2002): 67-72, fig. 3a, fig. 3b, (repro.).
Chelsea Schlievert and Jason Steuber, “Collecting Asian Art, Defining Gender Roles: World War II, woman curators, and the politics of Asian art collections in the United States,” in Journal of the History of Collections 29, no. 2 (2008): 296, fig. 4, (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), 259, fig. 6, (repro.).
Sheila E. Hoey Middleton, “The Quest for the ‘Third Buddha’: A Sequel,” in South Asian Studies 26, no. 2 (September 2010): 119-21, fig. 3, (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), 9, fig. 2, 34-37, (repro.).
