William Wynne Ryland - Encyclopedia

GEOGRAPHICAL NAMES

WILLIAM WYNNE RYLAND (1738-1783), English engraver, was born in London in July 1738, the son of an engraver and copper-plate printer. He studied under Ravenet, and in Paris under Boucher and J. P. le Bas. After spending five years on the continent he returned to England, and having. engraved portraits of George III. and Lord Bute after Ramsay, and a portrait of Queen Charlotte and the Princess Royal after Francis Cotes, R.A., he was appointed engraver to the king. In 1766 he became a member of the Incorporated Society of Artists, and he exhibited with them and in the Royal Academy. In his later life Ryland abandoned line-engraving, and introduced "chalk-engraving," in which the line is composed of stippled dots, and in which he transcribed Mortimer's "King John Signing Magna Charta," and copied the drawings of the old masters and the works of Angelica Kauffman. In consequence of his extravagant habits his affairs became involved; he was convicted of forging bills upon the East India Company, and, after attempting to commit suicide, was executed at Tyburn on the 29th of August 1783.