Oil on canvas
86 x 104 cms
Signed & dated lower left '1838'
Vaughan was appointed 1st Judge of the Western Circuit, Madras, in 1838.
He had married Catherine Maitland in India in 1828. They had four children. She died in 1833 at Tellicherry on the Malabar Coast.
August Schoefft was born in Pest in 1809. He came to India, landing in Bombay, in 1838. He is known to have reached Madras in September 1839. Tellicherry, where our portrait may have been painted, would have certainly been on his route.
Though Schoefft is best known for the marvellous paintings of the Court of Ranjit Singh, the Maharaja of Punjab, he has managed to convey, in this sensitive portrait of a Company officer, the insouciance of a man who would have been in charge of all he surveyed.
