Coomaraswamy, Ananda

(1877–1947) Intellectual and art historian who was one of the first Indian scholars to address a predominantly Western
audience. He was born in modern Sri
Lanka, the son of a Hindu father and an
English mother. Although he was
trained as a geologist, by 1910 he had
found his true vocation, the study of art.
Coomaraswamy was largely responsible
for publicizing Hindu miniature painting as a genre distinct from the contemporary Muslim court painting. Due to
the strength of this and other interpretive scholarly works, he became curator
of Indian and Muslim art at the Museum
of Fine Arts in Boston. He held this post
from 1917 to 1931, and his catalog of the
museum’s collection shows painstaking
and objective scholarship. In his later
years, he began to publish works on aesthetics, myth, religion, and culture,
focusing not only on India but also on
traditional Europe.