Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 48.djvu/266

 also sub-dean of the cathedral and a proctor in convocation.

For nearly thirty years Richson was one of the most prominent public men in Manchester, especially devoting himself to education and sanitary reform. As secretary of the Church Education Society in 1843, he was largely concerned in establishing the Manchester commercial schools, which long held a foremost position among such institutions. He was the chief originator and supporter of the Manchester and Salford education committee, which insisted on the necessity of combining religious with secular instruction in elementary day schools. His zealous labours influenced subsequent legislation, and many of his views were embodied in Forster's Education Act of 1870. One of his last acts in this connection was the drawing up of an important report (February 1870) for the convocation of York on primary education. His efforts on behalf of sanitary reform were almost equally vigorous, and with a few friends he founded the Manchester and Salford Sanitary Association in 1853.

He wrote a large number of pamphlets on popular education, several lesson-books on drawing and writing, papers on decimal coinage and the ruridecanal organisation of dioceses, and some occasional sermons, including a remarkable one on the ‘Observance of Sanitary Laws,’ 1854. Some of his papers were printed in the ‘Transactions of the Manchester Statistical Society.’

He died, after a long illness, on 15 May 1874, at his house in Shakespeare Street, Manchester, and was buried at Birch Church, near that city. His wife, a daughter of Samuel Chambers of Briston, Surrey, survived him. He had no children.

[Manchester Courier, 16 May 1874; Manchester Guardian, 18 May 1874; Raines's Lancashire MSS. vol. xlii. (Chetham Library); Memoir of Thomas Turner, 1875, p. 182; Memoir of W. M'Kerrow, 1881, p. 180.]  RICHTER, CHRISTIAN (1682?–1732), miniature-painter, born about 1682, was son of a silversmith at Stockholm. A brother, Benjamin Richter, who became a pupil of Karlsteen, the medallist at Dresden, and court medallist at Vienna, visited England for a short time, when he executed a set of medals of the members of the Swedish Club; some specimens of these are in the British Museum. Christian is said to have also been a pupil of Karlsteen at Dresden, and to have practised medal engraving and modelling in wax; but, not meeting with the support which he expected, he took to portrait-painting, especially in miniature and enamel. About 1702 he came to England, where he was patronised by his fellow countryman, Michael Dahl [q. v.], whose manner he imitated. He became an excellent copyist of Dahl's works, and also those of Vandyck, Lely, and Kneller. He had some skill as an original miniature-painter, but was hampered in his art by ill-health. He died in November 1732, aged 50, and was buried in the churchyard of St. James's, Westminster. A miniature by Richter of Viscountess Tyrconnel, painted in 1709, is at Wroxton Abbey.

[Walpole's Anecd. of Painting (ed. Wornum); Vertue's Diaries; Brit. Mus. Add. MS. 23072, &c.; Franks and Grueber's Medallic Hist. of Great Britain.]  RICHTER, HENRY JAMES (1772–1857), painter, born in Newport Street, Soho, London, on 8 March 1772, was second son of John Augustus Richter. His mother was Mary Haig. The father, a native of Dresden, was an artist, engraver, and scagliolist, and was well known for his works in imitation of marble. A brother, John Richter, was a prominent politician, and shared the reform views of John Horne Tooke [q. v.], with whom he was committed to the Tower in 1794. Another brother, Thomas, was a director of the Phœnix Life Insurance Company.

Henry was educated in the Soho and St. Martin's schools, and received his early tuition in art from Thomas Stothard [q. v.] In 1788, at the age of sixteen, he exhibited two landscapes at the Royal Academy, where he was an exhibitor for many years. He became a student at the Royal Academy in 1790. Richter, who was a versatile artist, had some skill also as an engraver, working in line, etching, and mezzotint, and he engraved some of his own works. In 1794 he was associated with his father in an edition of Milton's ‘Paradise Lost’ illustrated with engravings. He was in 1809 an exhibitor with the Associated Artists (water-colour) in Bond Street, of which society he was a member in 1810, and president in 1811 and 1812. A picture, painted by Richter in 1812, of ‘Christ giving Sight to the Blind,’ was purchased by the trustees of the British Institution for five hundred guineas. In 1813 Richter was elected a member of the Society of Painters in Oil and Water Colours (the ‘Old’ Watercolour Society). He resigned his membership in December of the same year, and up to 1820 was represented only as an exhibitor with the society. In 1821 he was again elected a member, but did not exhibit till 1823, when his name appears as an associate exhibitor. In 1826 he was a