Henry Thomas Ryall was an English

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 line, stipple and mixed-method engraver and later used mixed mezzotint

Mezzotint

Mezzotint is a printmaking process of the intaglio family, technically a drypoint method. It was the first tonal method to be used, enabling half-tones to be produced without using line- or dot-based techniques like hatching, cross-hatching or stipple...

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Ryall was appointed the royal engraver by Queen Victoria. Forty of his works appear in the National Portrait Gallery in London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

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Life

He was born at Frome

Frome

Frome is a town and civil parish in northeast Somerset, England. Located at the eastern end of the Mendip Hills, the town is built on uneven high ground, and centres around the River Frome. The town is approximately south of Bath, east of the county town, Taunton and west of London. In the 2001...

, Somerset

Somerset

The ceremonial and non-metropolitan county of Somerset in South West England borders Bristol and Gloucestershire to the north, Wiltshire to the east, Dorset to the south-east, and Devon to the south-west. It is partly bounded to the north and west by the Bristol Channel and the estuary of the...

, in August 1811. He was a pupil of Samuel William Reynolds

Samuel William Reynolds

Samuel William Reynolds was a mezzotint engraver, landscape painter and landscape gardener. Reynolds was a popular engraver in both Britain and France and there are over 400 examples of his work in the National Portrait Gallery in London.- Biography :Reynolds was born on 4 July 1773...

, the mezzotinto engraver, but the style in which he at first worked was that known as ‘chalk’ or ‘stipple.’ He began his career by engraving plates for the editions of Edmund Lodge

Edmund Lodge

Sir Edmund Lodge, KH , herald, was a long-serving English officer of arms, a writer on heraldic subjects, and a painstaking supplier of short, accurate biographies.-Life and career:...

's Portraits of Illustrious Personages of Great Britain, and for the series of Portraits of Eminent Conservatives and Statesmen, as well as for Charles Heath

Charles Heath

Charles Theodosius Heath was an English engraver, currency and stamp printer, book publisher and illustrator.-Life and work:...

's Book of Beauty and other works. Ryall died at his residence at Cookham

Cookham

Cookham is a village and civil parish in the north-easternmost corner of Berkshire in England, on the River Thames, notable as the home of the artist Stanley Spencer. It lies north of Maidenhead close to the border with Buckinghamshire...

, Berkshire

Berkshire

Berkshire is a historic county in the South of England. It is also often referred to as the Royal County of Berkshire because of the presence of the royal residence of Windsor Castle in the county; this usage, which dates to the 19th century at least, was recognised by the Queen in 1957, and...

, on 14 September 1867.

Works

His larger plates are a combination of line and stipple. They include ‘The Coronation of Queen Victoria,’ after the picture by Sir George Hayter, and ‘The Christening of the Princess Royal,’ after Charles Robert Leslie

Charles Robert Leslie

]Charles Robert Leslie , was an English genre painter. Born in London, his parents were American, and when he was five years of age he returned with them to their native country. They settled in Philadelphia, where their son was educated and afterwards apprenticed to a bookseller...

, the engraving of which procured for him the honorary appointment of historical engraver to the queen. He also engraved ‘Christopher Columbus at the Convent of La Rabida,’ after Sir David Wilkie; ‘The Blind Girl at the Holy Well,’ after Sir Frederick W. Burton, the first publication of the Royal Irish Art Union; ‘Landais Peasants going to Market’ and ‘Changing Pasture,’ after Rosa Bonheur

Rosa Bonheur

Rosa Bonheur, born Marie-Rosalie Bonheur, was a French animalière, realist artist, and sculptor. As a painter she became famous primarily for two chief works: Ploughing in the Nivernais , which was first exhibited at the Salon of 1848, and is now in the Musée d’Orsay in Paris depicts a team...

; ‘The Death of a Stag,’ ‘The Combat,’ ‘The Fight for the Standard,’ ‘Just Caught,’ and ‘Dogs and their Game’ (a series of six plates), after Richard Ansdell

Richard Ansdell

Richard Ansdell was an English oil painter of animals and genre scenes. He was also an engraver.-Life:Ansdell was born in Liverpool, Lancashire, the son of Thomas Griffiths Ansdell, a freeman who worked at the port, and Anne Jackson. His father died young and Richard was educated at the Bluecoat...

; ‘The Halt’ and ‘The Keeper's Daughter,’ after Ansdell and W. P. Frith, R.A.; ‘The Pursuit of Pleasure’ and ‘Home! The Return from the Crimea,’ after Sir Joseph Noel Paton; ‘Knox administering the first Protestant Sacrament in Scotland,’ after William Bonnar

William Bonnar

William Bonnar, a painter of portraits, history, and genre, was born at Edinburgh in 1800. His father was a house-painter of considerable skill, and the son, having from his early years evinced a remarkable aptitude for drawing, was apprenticed to one of the leading decorators of the time...

; ‘Queen Victoria and the Prince of Wales,’ after Robert Thorburn

Robert Thorburn

Sir Robert Thorburn was a Newfoundland merchant and politician who served as the colony's Premier from 1885 to 1889.Born in Scotland, Thorburn emigrated to Newfoundland in 1852 when he was sixteen...

; ‘The Princess Helena and Prince Alfred,’ after F. Winterhalter; ‘Adam and Eve’ (‘The Temptation and the Fall’), after Claude Marie Dubufe; ‘Devotion,’ after Édouard Frère

Édouard Frère

Édouard Frère was a French bookseller, archivist, biographer, and historian specialized in the Normandy area.-Life:...

; ‘A Duel after a Bal Masqué,’ after Jean Léon Gérôme; ‘The Prayer,’ after Jean Baptiste Jules Trayer; and numerous plates after Sir Edwin Landseer.

He engraved also Sir William Charles Ross's miniatures of Queen Victoria and the prince consort, and several other portraits. He painted occasionally in oils, and exhibited in 1846 at the Society of British Artists ‘Waiting for an Answer,’ and at the Royal Academy ‘A Reverie’ in 1852, and ‘The Crochet Lesson’ in 1859.