What did it mean to adorn one's home walls with paintings during the heyday of colonialism? Although lacking in appreciation, these quotes of Karl Weule show that he was one of several who noted a widespread pattern of house wall painting among communities in central East Africa during the colonial period. Wall painting was a feature that received little attention during its time and in subsequent scholarship. This article offers a preliminary analysis of wall painting found in parts of central East Africa during the heyday of colonialism between the 1900s-1960s. Home wall painting was far from “child-like” or “quaint,” as some colonial ethnographers would have it. Rather, it was an important popular arts tradition.1 My research collects and analyzes available period documentary and photographic depictions of house wall-art found in present day southern and central Tanzania, Malawi, and northern Mozambique. Precise readings of wall painting are undeniably difficult...

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