As biographers like Gillian Tindall have described the complex mix of cultures and societies in Bombay’s colonial melting pot: 'Like London, like Paris or New York or pre-war Alexandria, Bombay contains not just many different social worlds but whole solar systems of different societies moving separately and intricately over the same territory. Ever since its insignificant and hesitant beginnings it has acted as a draw for people of so many races and languages, Indian, Middle Eastern and European, that there is no one tongue in general use there. For a while the largest city east of Suez till you came to Tokyo, and the largest in the British Empire after London, Bombay has always just missed being a world capital.’

Aside from engravings and printed images of architectural views, artists and cartographers also made maps that helped consolidate the idea of Bombay, put together from disparate islands that were formerly in the possession of the Portuguese.

A skilful water colourist was an asset for the British East India Company’s administrators and military officials, ‘for’, as a historian of Bombay writes, ‘it ensured the production of accurate visual records for a reliable corpus of military intelligence.’ Military academies in Britain would regularly employ skilled watercolourists to teach potential candidates who were about to leave for service in Inda.

Philippus Baldaeus (1632-1672) was a Dutch missionary, theologian, and historian who lived in the seventeenth century. He is best known for his comprehensive account of the Dutch East India Company's activities in Sri Lanka and the Malabar Coast of India, titled A True and Exact Description of the Most Celebrated East India Coasts of Malabar and Coromandel and also of the Isle of Ceylon, published in 1672.

Baldaeus included illustrations of Bombay (then known as ‘Bombayo’) in his book. These illustrations typically depicted scenes of the city's landscape, architecture, and daily life during the seventeenth century, providing valuable historical insights into what Bombay looked like during the Dutch colonial period. The English Fort of Bombay is an engraving created by him, showing the fort of the English colonising forces in Bombay. The directors of the British East India Company ordered the construction of a custom house, warehouse and quay around the Portuguese settlement on Bombay Island in 1668. In the 1670s, under the governorship of Gerald Aungier, Bombay was developed as a trading centre. His plans for a walled town with bastions were implemented by a later governor, Charles Boone. By 1710, the fort included a magazine, quarters for soldiers and two water tanks.

George Lambert and Samuel Scott never actually visited India themselves, but they based their depictions of the country on written accounts and other sources. It is speculated that their view of the Bombay port may have been informed by Baldaeus’ engravings.

As Romita Ray writes: ‘Not surprisingly, the sea also shaped the vantage point of George Lambert and Samuel Scott’s view of Bombay displayed in 1732 at the Company’s newly rebuilt headquarters in Leadenhall Street in London. Here, the eye sweeps across the harbour where it encounters a phalanx of battling ships, their cannons booming and flags aflutter as they ferociously guard the Company’s territorial possessions. A contested zone where maritime power was tested time and time again, the sea shored up the Company’s transcontinental trade networks that wove their way though Saint Helena, Cape Town, Bombay, Tellicherry, Madras and Calcutta whose coastlines appear in five other canvases painted by Lambert and Scott—pictures that were displayed alongside the artistic duo’s views of Bombay at the East India House.’

The finished and coloured aquatint prints were published in series. One of their notable works is the series titled Oriental Scenery, which featured views of Indian landscapes, cities, and historical sites, including Bombay. These prints were highly influential and provided Europeans with some of the earliest visual representations of India. The Daniells' meticulous approach to capturing the essence of Bombay and other Indian cities in their aquatint prints not only documented the landscape and architecture but also contributed significantly to the European understanding of India during that time period. Their works remain valuable historical and artistic resources today.

Simpson's visit to Bombay occurred during a time of significant transformation in the city's history. It was, by then, a thriving hub of trade and commerce under British colonial rule. Simpson's keen observational skills and artistic talent enabled him to document the city's vibrant culture, diverse population, and architectural marvels.

During his stay in Bombay, Simpson created a series of exquisite illustrations that showcased the city's unique blend of traditional Indian and colonial British influences. His works captured the bustling bazaars, ornate temples, colonial buildings, and the bustling port, all of which were integral parts of Bombay's identity at the time. Especially fascinating is a print titled Bombay Girls School, where he depicts a typical school day for girls who were increasingly finding themselves the object of educational reform, spearheaded in places like neighbouring Poona (now Pune) by social reformers and anti-caste activists like Jyotirao and Savitribai Phule.

Walter Langhammer (1905-1977) was one of the foremost patrons, mentors and critics of the Bombay Progressive Artists' Group. Through Langhammer, who held lavish parties and salons at his residence following Bombay Art Society shows, early Indian progressive artists like M. F. Husain and S. H. Raza were exposed to the influence of modernist European art that was being systematically denigrated by the Nazi regime. He became chairman of the Bombay Art Society in 1938 and was a committee member of the diamond jubilee exhibition of the Society from 1952-53. Known primarily as a landscape painter, Langhammer made several views of Bombay harbour as well, an early (colonial) theme that, in his hands, found some sun-baked warmth and a sense of having been lived in, and not merely seen from a distance. In some of his other works, such as an untitled portrait of a woman at a spinning wheel, we see a European artist making explicit political gestures towards identifying with Indian nationalism. A process that arguably started with teachers like E. B. Havell and Gladstone Solomon at colonial art institutions, came full circle with this group of émigré influencers of Indian modern art—resulting in the making of an art that became ‘Indian’ by embracing the best of global art as well.