[5] He also travelled to Mexico, the United States, and several countries in the Middle East, where he made further paintings, with his works being exhibited at Vienna, Paris, and London.

[6][5] Interested in visually recording the exotic, Schoefft travelled from an early age, crossing several continents in his quest for foreign artistic inspiration.

[6] Joseph's son and August's father, József Károly Schöfft [Joseph Charles Schöfft] (Pest, 1776 –1851) had already enrolled as a finished painter in the preparatory class of the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna in 1802, where he learnt drawing from Hubert Maurer (1738-1818) and painting from Franz Caucig (1755-1828).

[6] The son of a local portrait painter, Schoefft was raised in an artistic milieu in Pest, Hungary; an atmosphere which encouraged his inquisitive mind and taste for the observation.

[6] Schoefft financed his various international expeditions by securing commission for several prestigious portraits in the 1820s and 30s; most famously that of Hungarian politician and aristocrat Count István Széchenyi, entitled Istvan Szechenyi at the Iron Gate of the Danube, now housed in the Bakony Museum, Veszprém.

[5] He was employed by the Sikh court for a year and a half and successfully secured a large number of commissions after gaining the trust of the local rulers.

[5] There he sketched a picture of Maharaja Ranjit Singh, the late ruler of the kingdom, listening to a recitation of the Sikh scripture at the Golden Temple.

[5] Schoefft was nearly lynched due to this mistaken perception and only managed to escape by getting to the house of Bhai Gurmukh Singh, his patron at the time.

During his one-year stay in Lahore as the guest of Dr. Martin Honigberger, the personal physician to the Sikh Royal Court and a fellow German speaker, he composed a series of sketches and notes on which he would rely for the development of much larger oil compositions upon his return to Europe.[11]M.

Schoefft who has resided amongst us for some months and acquired considerable reputation as an artist is, we understand on the point of quitting Calcutta on a journey to Lahore.

On his way thither, M. Schoefft propoes to halt at Moorshedabad, Monghyr, Patna, Dinapore, Benares, Allahabad, Lucknow, Cawnpore, Agra, Delhi, Meerut, Kurnaul etc.

— Calcutta Courier, June 13, 1840[12][7]Schoefft left Lahore in March 1842 and returned to Hungary for a short-term visit via Agra and Bombay.

[5] During this time, Schoefft began to produce oil paintings after original sketches he drew whilst he was employed in the Sikh Empire.

[5] Schoefft kept in-touch with the former Sikh ruling family, who had been deposed after British conquest of the Punjab in 1849 forced into exile in England.

[5] Schoefft's exhibition in Constantinople was held in the newly built Dolma Bakçe Theatre, part of the palace of the same name, was visited by Sultan Abdul-Medjid in 1859.

Russian Prince Alexis Soltykoff, visiting Lahore in March 1842,[14] tells of finding Schoefft's paintings in the palace treasures:Five or six portraits in oils without frames, the work of Schoeft, the German painter who has returned to British India.

[13]Despire reaching acclaim and repute during his lifetime due to his travels and exhibitions, after Schoefft's death in 1888, he became forgotten in Hungary and was only rediscovered in the 1960's as an important painter in Hungarian art history.