Edwin Dalton was a miniature painter and copyist who enjoyed Victoria and Albert's patronage in the 1840s making copies after works in their collection by other artists. Dalton's wife Magdalena Ross was similarly employed by the royal couple, and Magdalena's brother William - later Sir William Ross - was one of the Queen and Prince's favourite portrait painters. Between 24 January and 6 February 1846 Edwin Dalton supervised the attempts of Victoria and Albert to learn the printmaking technique of lithography; see RCINs 2506499 and 2506496, prints depicting some of the royal children, for examples where Queen Victoria drew the images on the lithographic stone and Dalton then printed them. Dalton travelled to Australia in the 1850s, where he lived in first Melbourne and then Sydney, and practiced as an artist and photographer.