James Wales (1747-1795) was a noted Scottish portrait painter and draughtsman. He was a contemporary of Lachlan Macquarie in Bombay in the last decade of the C18th.

In the period between Wales' arrival in Bombay in July 1791 and his tragic death in November 1795 he executed a number of important and evocative views of the settlement and its environs.

This selection of images has been made available (with permission) from the Peter Anker Collection held in the Kulturhistorisk Museum at the University of Oslo, Norway. They were originally published posthumously in 1800 in the work Twelve Views of the Island of Bombay and Its Vicinity: taken in the years 1791 and 1792. They provide a unique perspective on the landscape and daily life of Bombay in the last decade of the C18th.