Paintings of the Lahore Fort: The Beginnings of Material Analysis The content of the paper published by CROMLahore, will be broadly divided into 2 significant sections. The first is a historical overview of the tradition of wall painting in Pakistan, a history that goes back to Prehistoric times. The latter section will be informed by my research on the Lahore Fort’s walls: The Kala Burj, the Sehdara, the Daulat Khana Khaas o Aam, as well as supporting sites outside of the Fort. The research sets out to identify, document, and discover scientifically, the material found in wall paintings of the Lahore Fort. By extension, it is also an exploration of the dynamic life of the identified materials, their socio- economic history and their journeys as traced through the regions of South and Central Asia, the Middle East, Afghanistan and beyond.

I will endeavour to essay a visual observation of the painted surfaces of the Kala Burj and the SehDara, of which there have been new findings since the last scholarly article. Some surprising findings from non- invasive infra- red photography will be shared. I hope that I will have been able to conduct some further tests of the painted surfaces as well as the paint- receiving layers, along with the layers of bricks and mortar. Based on the results, a timeline of material and its history in connection to its presence at the Fort, will be drawn, which will be correlated to the historical accounts of the use of the same material, seeking to explain how it came to be there. The study will seek to establish proof and chronology of the materials, to be utilised by conservationists, and students of South Asian art history.

It is hoped that the wide gap in material knowledge of the wall paintings of the Lahore Fort, and by extension, the art of Lahore through the ages, is amended through the series of talks that CROMLahore has initiated today at this aptly historic site, on an aptly historic day- here I allude not to the day of St Valentine, but rather to the birth of the originator of the Mughal Empire, the most fascinating Padishah Babur (who gave great precedence to the women in his family).