The Natacha Rambova Collection of Lamaist Art: Part 2.1

Two weeks ago, we explored the early life of ballerina, designer, actress, and collector Natacha Rambova. Here, we look at the second chapter of Rambova’s fascinating life, where her academic pursuits take center stage and her relationship with the PMA begins.

After her divorce from actor Rudolph Valentino, her self-imposed exile from Hollywood, and the closure of her New York City dress boutique, Rambova decided to pursue some of her other interests: Egyptology, archeology, and mysticism. She also began collecting Egyptian, Tibetan, and Nepalese art…indeed, a selection of works from her gift to the Museum is on view in gallery 232 (and will be explored in a later post).

It was in this phase of her life that Rambova met one of her lifelong friends, the Museum’s former Curator of Indian Art, Dr. Stella Kramrisch.

                 

Born in 1896, Stella Kramrisch (left) was trained as a ballet dancer growing up in Austria. A year later, Natacha Rambova (right, nee Winifred O’Shaughnessy) was born in 1897, and moved from Utah to study dance in Europe when she was 17.

       

Above, Stella Kramrisch in India (left, date unknown) and Winifred O’Shaughnessy (Natacha Rambova), right, 1909 

              

Both women shared a lifelong love of animals and flowers, textiles, art, and history; as well as similar research topics, colleagues, and friends. Kramrisch is at left with her pet cat, Rambova is at right with her dogs.

Rambova’s interest in Egypt was enhanced during a 1936 trip with her second husband, where she met Howard Carter (who is noted as a primary discoverer of the tomb of Tutankhamun) on a tour of Luxor and Edfu. She was so taken by Egypt that she “felt as if she had at last returned home,” confirming her strong belief in past lives. Her interests in astrology, mythology, dream analysis, theosophy, and comparative religions funneled her studies in Egyptology, and she befriended the Mellons—American philanthropists who awarded her a grant to research symbols on ancient scarabs in 1946.

She worked extensively with Russian Egyptologist Alexandre Piankoff over the years, again with further financial support from the Mellon’s Bollingen Foundation, and was connected to other intellectuals such as Carl Jung, Joseph Campbell, and Ananda Coomaraswamy. It was through the Bollingen Foundation and the classes that Rambova would often hold in her NYC apartment that she became acquainted with photographer Dorothy Norman, and the woman who would become one of her lifelong friends, Dr. Stella Kramrisch.

Kramrisch, a renowned scholar of Indian art who had taught at the University of Calcutta and the University of Pennsylvania, joined the Museum’s staff as Curator of Indian Art in 1954…the start of a decades-long curatorial career. Rambova’s own interest in Himalayan art possibly originated with her interest in George Ivanovich Gurdjieff, who founded the Institute for Harmonious Development of Man. His philosophies combined the teachings of Eastern and Western Christianity, Sufism, Zoroastrianism, and Tibetan yoga.

Due to her extensive academic and personal friendship with Kramrisch, Rambova gave the Museum a number of South Asian—especially Tibetan and Nepalese—artworks both during her lifetime and after her death. She also gave a large number of books to the Museum’s holdings. As a matter of fact, there was a Natacha Rambova Gallery of Nepali and Lamaistic Arts here until the mid-1990s.

In our next installment, we’ll examine the works of art in the Rambova collection. For now, however, we present some of Rambova’s letters to her dear friend…

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