Sacred Tree

While choosing the essentially western print medium of etching, Mukul Dey portrayed various aspects of Indian life including river scenes in Bengal, the markets of Calcutta, and traditional mystic Hindu and Sufi Muslim Baul singers. In Sacred Tree, from 1927, he offers a complex allegorical scene uniting various deities and symbolic imagery found in the rich heritage of traditional Hindu religious art. Dey was a pioneer of dry-point etching in India. He was the first Indian artist to travel abroad for the purpose of studying printmaking as a fine art. After a sojourn to Japan where he studied classical Chinese and Japanese painting, Dey traveled in 1916 to Chicago to learn the technique of etching. He remained a life-member of the Chicago Society of Etchers. On his return to India the following year, the artist concentrated on making fine art prints in the etching technique, supporting himself by making portrait drawings of the wealthy and famous, and translating these into etchings. In 1920, he traveled abroad to London to study under several famous British masters of etching and engraving at the Slade School of Fine Art and the Royal College.