Shymal Dutta Ray is considered perhaps the best watercolorists of modern India. He was born in Ranchi and studied at the Government College of Arts and Crafts in Calcutta. He was a founding member of the Society of Contemporary Artists in 1959, and of Painters 80, founded in 1968.

Dutta Ray suffered from severe ill-health while growing up and witnessed the horrors of the 1943 Bengal famine as a child, both of which impacted his life and art tremendously. He began his career working in oil but had to switch to watercolor on medical advice as he was allergic to oil paints. Dutta Ray became a master of the demanding medium of watercolor and brought about a major development in its application by using saturated hues instead of the diluted colors prevalent among his contemporaries. He painted the contradictory contemporary reality of Calcutta, filled with sorrow, poverty, despair, as also happiness, and hope.