The most complete account of the trial will be found in the Morning Post, Monday, July 28, 1783. Those who are interested in the much-debated question whether the site of the ‘Tyburn Tree’ was in Connaught Square, Bryanston Street, or Upper Seymour Street, would do well to remember that on August 29, 1783 (so the papers tell us), the gallows were placed fifty yards nearer the park wall than usual. Naturally, its position was changed from time to time.
Notes
Note I.—Dic. Nat. Biog. The date of Ryland’s birth is given as July 1732! Nor was he the eldest, but the third son of his father.
Note II.—Eighteenth Century Colour Prints. Mrs Julia Frankau. Macmillan (1900).
Mrs Frankau’s explanation of the flight of Ryland is scarcely plausible. It is not credible that a man who is engaged in a frantic search for a lost mistress would remain in close hiding, posing as an invalid, only venturing abroad after dark. Nor is it a tenable assumption that he attempted to commit suicide in a fit of despair because he fancied that he was being arrested for debt, and thus might lose all chance of finding his chère amie. One of the strongest pleas in his defence was that his fortune was ‘princely’ and he protested that he fled because he could not find the man from whom he had received the fatal bill. It is a strange coincidence that the discovery of the fraud upon the East India Company should have taken place on the eve of his disappearance. Moreover, he was not arrested for the forgery that secured his conviction. The warrant charged him with counterfeiting two other bills of exchange to the value of £7114 (as reference to the advertisement columns of the daily papers of April 3 will show), and it was not until this publicity that Mr Moreland, the banker, examined the bill for £210, which Ryland had deposited with his house. Thus the accusation of one crime led to the discovery of another! And it is still more strange that the artist should have cashed an East India Company bill of the value of £210 on September 19, 1782, while on November 4 he should have handed to his banker another bill—an exact copy of the first—bearing a similar date, denomination, and acceptances. Although these two identical bills came into Ryland’s possession within the space of a few weeks, he did not seek an explanation of the remarkable coincidence. A careful survey of all the facts must convince everyone of the guilt of the unfortunate engraver, but it is a pleasure to be able to agree with Mrs Frankau—except in some minor details—in her contention that the evidence was not conclusive. Ryland was convicted because he failed to show that he had received the forged bill from another person, and to cast thus the burden of proof from the prosecution to the defence is quite foreign to the methods of a modern tribunal.
Since the Catholic has become the spoilt child of contemporary literature, it is not surprising to find Wynne Ryland hailed as the victim of Protestant persecution. Yet there appears to be no evidence to support this assumption. There is not a line in the newspapers of the day to indicate that any anti-Romanist feeling was aroused, and had such been the case, the Public Advertiser, at all events, whose animosity towards ‘Popery’ is sufficiently evident, would have trumpeted loudly. It is significant that the mob never behaved with greater propriety—very unusual conduct in the howling Tyburn crowd—than on August 29, 1783. How different would it have been if the word had been whispered that a Papist was going to the gallows! Strutt and Angelo, who write so sympathetically of their friend, have nothing to say on this subject, and, indeed, accept his guilt as proved. Although the former, who wrote in 1785, might have reason for reticence, yet the latter, whose book was published a year before the Emancipation Act, could have no reason to suppress such evidence. Indeed, we have only the doubtful authority of the Authentic Memoires for the statement that Ryland was a ‘supposed’ Catholic in his early youth. With this very ambiguous suggestion we must reconcile the strange fact that he was buried in a graveyard of the Established Church, and that the last rites were performed by an Anglican clergyman. There are one or two slips of the pen in Mrs Frankau’s interesting memoir. As the catalogue of the Royal Academy shows that Ryland contributed his first drawing in 1772—four years after the institution was established—he was not “one of the earliest exhibitors.” From the same catalogue it appears that the print-shop in the Strand was opened in 1774. The date of the publication of the Authentic Memoires, given as 1794, is, of course, a clerical error. Owing to the footnote attached to Ryland’s letter to Francis Donaldson of Liverpool, printed in the Morning Post, September 2, 1783, the document must be regarded with suspicion. No trivial disagreement with the conclusions of Mrs Frankau can diminish the interest of her delightful account of the great engraver, which must remain the most valuable of recent monographs.
Note III.—There are references to W. W. Ryland in the innumerable dictionaries of painters and engravers, French, German, and English, such as Basan, Le Blanc, Portalis and Beraldi, Andreas Andrescen, Redgrave, Bryan, etc. One of the best of modern notices will be found in the Print Collectors’ Handbook, by Alfred Whitman.
A LIST OF WILLIAM WYNNE RYLAND’S ENGRAVINGS.
(By Ruth Bleackley.)
| 1. | Les Grâces au Bain, | after Boucher. | } |
| 2. | La Belle Dormeuse, | do. | } |
| 3. | Le Repose Champêtre, | do. | } |
| 4. | Vue d’un pont, | do. | } |
| 5. | Berger passant une rivière, | do. | } 1757-60 |
| 6. | La petite Repose, | do. | } |
| 7. | La Bonne Mère, | do. | } |
| 8. | La Marchande d’Oiseaux, | do. | } |
| 9. | I. and II. Vue de Fronville, | do. | } |
| 10. | Jupiter and Leda, | do. | } |
| 11. | George III., King of Great Britain. Published April 1762. | ||
| 12. | John Stuart, 3rd Earl of Bute—after Allan Ramsay. Published February 1763. | ||
| 13. | George III. in State Robes—after Allan Ramsay. Published 1767. | ||
| 14. | George III. (bust). | ||
| 15. | Queen Charlotte with infant (Princess Royal)—after Cotes. Published 1769. | ||
| 16. | Diogenes—after Salvator Rosa. Published 1771. | ||
| 17. | Antiochus and Stratonice—after P. da Cortona. Published 1772. | ||
| 18. | General Stanwix’s Daughter—after Angelica Kauffman (called also “The Pensive Muse”). Published in colours 1774. | ||
| 19. | Hope—after A. Kauffman—(a portrait of herself). Published in colours, February 7, 1775. | ||
| 20. | A Lady in a Turkish Dress—after A. Kauffman. Oval in colours. Published May 1, 1775. | ||
| 21. | A Lady in a Greek Dress—(the Duchess of Richmond)—after A. Kauffman. Published November 20, 1775. | ||
| 22. | Narcissus. Drawn and engraved by Ryland. Published January 12, 1775. | ||
| 23. | Domestick Employment. Drawn and engraved by Ryland, in colours. Published September 13, 1775. | ||
| 24. | Faith—after A. Kauffman. Published 1776. | ||
| 25. | Dormio Innocuus—after A. Kauffman. Circle in colours. Published May 21, 1776. | ||
| 26. | Olim Truncus—after A. Kauffman. Circle in colours and red. Published, first state, April 3; second state, May 1, 1776. | ||
| 27. | Juno cestum a Venere Postulat—after A. Kauffman. Circle in colours and red. Published January 1, 1777. | ||
| 28. | Achilles lamenting the Death of his friend Patroclus—after A. Kauffman. Published December 4, 1777, in colours and red. | ||
| 29. | Patience—after A. Kauffman. Published May 27, 1777. | ||
| 30. | Perseverance—after A. Kauffman. Published June 24, 1777. | ||
| 31. | Cupid Bound, with Nymphs breaking his Bow—after A. Kauffman. Published March 17, 1777. | ||
| 32. | Telemachus returns to Penelope—after A. Kauffman, in colours. Published December 4, 1777. | ||
| 33. | Venus in her Triumphal Chariot—after A. Kauffman, in colours and red. Published September 7, 1778. | ||
| 34. | Charles Rogers—mezzotint after Sir Joshua Reynolds. Published 1778. | ||
| 35. | Cleopatra decorating the Tomb of Mark Antony—after A. Kauffman. Published March 25, 1778, in colours. | ||
| 36. | Telemachus at the Court of Sparta—after A. Kauffman, in colours. Published 1778. | ||
| 37. | The Judgment of Paris—after A. Kauffman, in colours and red. Published January 17, 1778. | ||
| 38. | Maria Moulins—after A. Kauffman. Published 1779, in colours and red. | ||
| 39. | Eloisa—after A. Kauffman. Oval in colours and red. Published 1779. | ||
| 40. | Britannia directing Painting, Sculpture and Architecture to address themselves to Royal Munificence, etc.—after Cipriani, in colours and red. Published August 18, 1779. | ||
| 41. | Marianne. Drawn and engraved by Ryland. In colours and red. Published January 3, 1780. | ||
| 42. | Eleanor sucking the poison from the wound of King Edward—after A. Kauffman. Published March 1, 1780, in colours. | ||
| 43. | Lady Elizabeth Grey imploring pardon for her husband—after A. Kauffman. Published 1780, in colours and red. | ||
| 44. | The Flight of Paris and Helen—after A. Kauffman. Published 1781. | ||
| 45. | Venus presenting Helen to Paris—after A. Kauffman. Published 1781. | ||
| 46. | Cymon and Iphigenia—after A. Kauffman. Circle in colours. Published January 15, 1782. | ||
| 47. | Morning Amusement—after A. Kauffman. Published March 1, 1784. | ||
| 48. | King John signing the Magna Charta—after Mortimer. Published 1785. This plate was finished after Ryland’s death by Bartolozzi and published by the widow. | ||
| 49. | Interview between Edgar and Elfrida—after A. Kauffman. Published 1786. According to Bryan’s Dictionary this plate was finished by W. Sharp and published by the widow. | ||
| 50. | Donald MacLeod, aged 102—after W. R. Bigg. Published 1790. | ||
The following I am unable to date:— | |||
| 51. | John, Duke of Lauderdale. | ||
| 52. | Henry, 7th Baron Digby. | ||
| 53. | Churchill, Duke of Marlborough. | ||
| 54. | Charity—after Van Dyck. | ||
| 55. | The Muse Erato—after Joseph Zucchi. | ||
| 56. | Les Muses (Urania, Clio, Thalia, and Erato)—after Cipriani. | ||
| 57. | Sir John Falstaff raising Recruits—after F. Hayman. | ||
| 58. | Interior of a Dutch Cabaret with peasants dancing—after R. Brackenberg. | ||
| 59. | Penelope awakened by Euryclea—after A. Kauffman. | ||
| 60. | Religion—after A. Kauffman. | ||
| 61. | Ludit Amabiliter—after A. Kauffman. Circle in colours. | ||
| 62. | Penelope hanging up the Bow of Ulysses—after A. Kauffman. | ||
| 63. | Achilles discovered by Ulysses in the disguise of a Virgin—after A. Kauffman. | ||
| 64. | Andromache weeping over the ashes of Hector—after A. Kauffman. | ||
| 65. | Samma at Benoni’s Grave—after A. Kauffman. | ||
Note.—The Morning Herald, May 5, and the Morning Post, August 28, 1783, state that Ryland left unfinished a plate of the Battle of Agincourt, after Mortimer.