Henry Bryan Hall grew up in England and began his trade as an apprentice to the engravers Benjamin Smith and Henry Meyer. Working for the Royal engraver Henry Ryall, he produced plates for Eminent Conservative Statesmen (1837-1838) and worked on 70 of the heads in Ryall’s Coronation of Queen Victoria after Hayter’s painting of the same scene. Other productions in which he was involved include The Land of Burns (1840), The Gallery of Beauty (1841) and the Sporting Sketch-Book (1842) of John William Carleton; the National Portrait Gallery, London, has several of his engravings of historical Protestant clergymen from the 1830s. Moving to New York in 1850, he established his own firm, HB Halls Sons, which specialised in engraved portraits and miniatures on ivory. Of his eight children, four – Alfred, Alice, Charles and Henry - joined their father in the engraving business.
