10 Facts About Alice Coomaraswamy

Alice Coomaraswamy recorded Indian music and was a performer of Hindu songs and poems, and went on concert tours in Britain and America.

Alice Coomaraswamy Ethel Richardson was born in October 1889 in Sheffield, England, to George Richardson and Sarah Faulkner.

In 1907 Alice visited her friend Philip Mairet, who was part of the same group of artists as art historian Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy and his wife, the hand weaver and dyer Ethel Coomaraswamy.

Alice Coomaraswamy made no secret of his affair and eventually proposed that he should take a second partner.

Coomaraswamy studied Rajput painting whilst Alice studied Indian music with Abdul Rahim of Kapurthala.

Alice Coomaraswamy was successful and toured around Britain where she would sing after an introductory talk by her husband.

Whilst they were there, Alice Coomaraswamy was invited to serve as a research fellow on Indian art in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts in 1917.

Alice Coomaraswamy married Francis Bitter, becoming his first wife on May 31,1928, in Manhattan, New York City.

Alice Coomaraswamy worked for Westinghouse and was a professor at Caltech in Pasadena, California, in 1930 and later at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Alice Coomaraswamy died of a heart ailment on July 15,1958, at Phillips House at the Massachusetts General Hospital.