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Mukul Chandra Dey

(1895 - 1989) Born in 1895, in Kolkata, Mukul Dey began schooling under the guidance of Rabindranath Tagore in 1905, in Santiniketan. He proceeded to study art informally under Abanindranath Tagore and Gaganendranath Tagore. By the age of 18, his drawings and paintings were exhibited by the Indian Society of Oriental Art (Kolkata) in Paris and London. He accompanied Rabindranath Tagore to Japan (1916-17) and U.S.A. He trained in intaglio printmaking under James Blanding Sloan in Chicago, where he showed and sold his etchings at the Art Institute of Chicago. He has intricately copied the frescoes in the caves of Ajanta in Aurangabad, transferring it to canvas. Dey had also studied at the Slade School of Art and the Royal College of Art, London.He was elected life member of the Chicago Society of Etchers and member of the Advisory Committee for murals in New Delhi, and India House, London (1927-28). He received the Jubilee Medal of King George V and Queen Mary in 1936 and their Majesties’ Coronation Medal in 1937 and was the first Principal to initiate the Women’s Department in the Government School of Art, Kolkata (1924). Dey went to U.S.A. on Fulbright Scholarship and was the curator of the National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi (1953-54). In 1984, Dey was honoured with `Abanindra Puraskar’ by the Government of West Bengal. In 1987, he was elected a Fellow of the Lalit Kala Akademi, New Delhi, and in the same year, the Rabindra Bharati University conferred an honorary Doctorate on him. Mukul Dey passed away in 1989 in Kolkata.