Saeed Akhtar is one of Pakistan’s foremost portrait painters and an influential art educator. He was born in Ghakhar, Punjab, then part of British India. His father, Fazal Karim, served as an education instructor with the British Indian Army and later taught Urdu in Quetta, where the family moved when Saeed was still a child. Surrounded by books and language, he developed a keen eye for character and expression that would later define his portraiture. Akhtar received his formal art education at the National College of Arts (NCA), Lahore, where he studied under the pioneering modernist Shakir Ali. After graduating, he joined the NCA faculty and went on to teach for...