James Legge (1815–97) was a Sinologist and missionary from the Aberdeenshire town of Huntly. Following graduation from King’s College, Aberdeen in 1835, he taught Latin and mathematics in Blackburn, Lancashire. In September 1837, Legge began studying for a master of divinity degree at Highbury College in Middlesex and became involved with the London Missionary Society. He started to learn Chinese with Samuel Kidd (1804–43), who had recently returned from the Anglo-Chinese College at Malacca.
Ordained in 1839, Legge set sail that year for Malacca, becoming principal of the college in 1841. He continued to develop his language skills and sought ways to advance the missionary cause in China after the country was opened to the West following the First Anglo-Chinese, or Opium, War (1839–42). Moving to Hong Kong in 1843, Legge spent the next 30 years there, involved in scholarship, translation, education and wider missionary endeavours.
He returned to Scotland in 1873 before becoming the first professor of Chinese and the first nonconformist to hold a chair at Oxford University.
The students are identified in an engraving by John Cochrane (see NPG D8772) as (left to right) 'Le Kim-lin' [Li Limlin], 'Sung Fuh-Keen' [Song Hootkiam] and 'Woowan-sew' [Ng Asow].