The sensational portraits of pan-Arab luminaries exhibited by Zulfa al-Saʿdī at the 1933 First National Arab Fair—lauded as “an example of the Arab awakening (nahḍa) of the future”—stood apart from the other artistic and artisanal wares on display. Beyond their innovative use of the qudsi (Jerusalemite) icon format to portray a pantheon of historical and contemporary proponents of pan-Arabism, al-Saʿdī’s portraits stood out at the commercial trade fair for another, radical reason: the paintings were not for sale. Fiscal success was essential to the Arab Fair’s founding by Palestine’s self-proclaimed “men of capital,” who understood economics as being at the core of politics and, correspondingly, financial prosperity as the bedrock for national triumph. Artistic products at the fair, from traditional handicrafts to modern paintings, joined the predominantly agricultural products for sale to convey the idea that not only in industry but also in culture, in the bottling of olive oil as in the making of oil paintings, the commodification of Palestine’s industrial and artistic products was considered instrumental in the fight for political autonomy during the British Mandate. This essay examines the curious case of al-Saʿdī’s unpriced paintings at the Arab Fair, and the immense acclaim they received, to argue that their decommodification played a major role in their assumed political value and cemented their status as de facto “patron saints” of the fair. I also contend that their non-commercial status indicated a separation between art and craft in the field of Palestinian cultural production for the first time. Remaining together as an unsold set, even as the nakba forced al-Saʿdī and her artworks into exile, their initial decommodification has thus allowed them to play a foundational role in the narration of Palestine’s modern art history.