This portrait of Sheikh Muhammad Bukhsh depicts the sitter in Queen Victoria's specially-designed 'Indian Court Dress', with the Queen's Diamond Jubilee medal pinned to his left shoulder.

The painting was among the ‘beautiful portraits…for me: of my 3 Indians – 2 Life size’ that Rudolf Swoboda painted for the Queen at Osborne in the summer of 1888, after the artist's return from India. Sheikh Muhammad Bukhsh was engaged as one of the Queen’s attendants on 17 May 1887 and he left the Queen’s service in 1895. He was described by the Queen as ‘very dark, with a very smiling expression’. It is known that two men from Bhera, a city in the Punjab province (now Pakistan), one of whom shared his named with this sitter, came to England in June 1885 to work on the construction of the Durbar Hall for the Colonial and Indian Exhibition, held in South Kensington the following year.

The painting is signed and dated: Rudolf Swoboda 1888.