Ágoston Schoefft
1809–1888 · Hungarian portrait and Orientalist painter
August Schoefft (Pest, 1809 – London, 1888) was a Hungarian painter of the nineteenth century, known above all for his portraits and Orientalist scenes of India and the Sikh Empire. He came from a family of sculptors and painters in Pest: his grandfather, Joseph Schöfft, founded the family workshop, and his father, József Károly Schöfft, trained at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. Schoefft worked in the family workshop until 1828 and then studied in Vienna.
His early work included portraits of Hungarian public figures, such as Count István Széchenyi. After a short stay in Pest he set out on a long journey around the world. Between 1838 and 1842 he was in India, where he painted members of the Mughal royal family and British and French officials. In Lahore he worked for the Sikh court, which valued his European-style painting over the traditional Indian miniature. After returning to Europe he produced large oil compositions from his sketches, including The Court of Lahore, dated 1848. He also travelled to Mexico and the United States and kept in touch with the deposed Sikh royal family.
His style blends late Baroque and Classicist elements with Romantic and Biedermeier traits. His Orientalist paintings, rich in intense colour, present Asian culture with a mixture of precision and exoticism aimed at European audiences. His works are now held in museums in Hungary and Pakistan and appear regularly at international auctions. His legacy lies in being one of the main pictorial records of the Sikh Empire in the mid-nineteenth century.