Printmaker Ernest Herbert Whydale was born in Elland, Yorkshire, England, in 1886. His formal training took place at the Westminster College of Art as well as Camberwell School of Art, where he studied both painting and printmaking. He began exhibiting at the Royal Academy in 1910 and subsequently exhibited at the RA over a period of forty years. He was elected an associate of the Royal Society of Painter Etchers and Engravers in 1920.

Following his completion of his studies Whydale lived for a time in London, but after his father's retirement, he moved with him and the rest of his family to Royston in Hertfordshire in 1918, where he remained for the rest of his life. It was here that he focused on his his most well known subjects: landscapes, the daily lives of rural farming folk, and horses. His work is often seen as an account of bucolic English countryside just prior to its disappearance due to ubanization, sprawl, and industry. He died in Hertfordshire in 1952. 

Whydale's work is held in the permanent collections of the Victoria & Albert Museum, the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, and the Royston & District Museum and Art Gallery, as well as the South London Art Gallery, among others.