Szatmári Gizella: Signs of Remembrance - Our Budapest (Budapest, 2005)

■ Memorial plaque at II Képíró utca

father, too, was a painter, and it is for him that the street where his house lived was named Képíró utca (Painter Street)". József's son Ágoston was trained in Vienna. An adventurous spirit, Ágoston spent an extended period of time in India after his visits to Egypt and Turkey; here he worked for the East India Company. Later he became a well-liked portrait painter employed by various royal courts. All the more so as the English, and other foreigners, had scanty notions of Hungary, according to an account he gives of his findings in a letter. The only Hungarian names known abroad were those of the famous horseman Count Móric Sándor and István Széchenyi. He met, and painted a portrait of, Sándor Körösi Csorna. He acquired a fortune and a valuable collection of paintings. In 1901, the aging painter Ferenc Újházi remembered Schöfft as having had a large study in Vienna where he had exhibited sketches he had made during travels to the Orient. Two of his large Venetian canvases were purchased from the painter by the king himself. Although he returned to Pest, where he built a house in Stáció utca - his "Negro” servants crated a spectacle here -, he did not settle down in Hungary but bought himself a palazzo in Venice (which he later turned into a hotel). In 1856 he had an exhibition in London. "Despite the high entrance fee of 1 pound sterling - equalling ten pengő forints - the event attracted numerous visitors.” His friends were members

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