William Smyth, actor, writer, and painter, was born 12 November 1813 in Dublin, son of Richard Smyth of 16 Dame St., haberdasher, alderman, JP, high sheriff of Dublin, and lord mayor of Dublin (1823–4; locum tenens in early 1831). Nothing is known of his mother. In 1828 he joined the Royal Navy as a midshipman and served aboard HMS Ganges, HMS Temeraire, and HMS Pylades. He left the navy on being appointed public treasurer of Dublin, and between 1843 and 1845 worked as a comic actor on the London stage, using the stage name ‘William S. Ryan’. After his marriage (1845) to a daughter of Dr Charles Butler of Monkstown, Co. Dublin, he worked as a journalist, writing for English and Irish newspapers and journals such as All the Year Round, the Omnibus, and the Dublin Press. He also worked as the parliamentary reporter for the Morning Advertiser.

Smyth was an accomplished portrait and landscape painter, and between 1848 and 1862 held several exhibitions at the Royal Hibernian Academy of the Arts. He died in London, at 17 Frankfort Terrace, Harrow Road, on 5 March 1878 and was buried at Highgate cemetery.