He was primarily a marine and landscape painter, but his best-known works depict the city's medieval and early modern architecture before its demolition and replacement during the Industrial Revolution.

Though his talents were acclaimed by his contemporaries, and he was seen as an important early figure in the emergence of Manchester as a centre of the arts, it never translated into popular or financial success and he died in relative poverty and obscurity.

"[13][14][15] Francis Dukinfield Astley was Ralston's first patron; he "was enabled to trace, in the rude attempts of the unassuming boy, the budding power of Linnaeus which ripened to so great maturity.

[20] By the late 1810s he had built a reputation as a skilled artist, and much like his teacher Rathbone he had a bias towards "picturesque" rural scenes, with "mouldering castles, ruined abbeys, and dilapidated cottages" his typical subjects.

[11][12][21] Like many of the UK's rapidly growing cities during the Industrial Revolution, Manchester's existing medieval urban fabric came to be seen as a hindrance by civic leaders—its small, old wooden buildings were unable to host large machinery, and its narrow streets limited the flow of traffic.

In 1821 Parliament passed the Manchester Streets Improvement Act, which empowered local commissioners to begin a 12-year project of modernising the city centre by widening several key roads by up to 15 feet either side, as well as lowering them all to a uniform level.

[24][25] The early 1820s saw a boom in the publication of topographical engravings across England, out of a widespread concern that views of "traditional" buildings and streets needed to be preserved before they were lost forever.

[20] The prospectus announcing the series, Views of the Ancient Buildings in Manchester, stated that subscribers could expect 20 lithographs, split across four volumes—although in the end only just over half of the pictures were actually published between 1823 and 1825, which were then gathered and republished as a single volume after Ralston's death.

In 1869, Manchester's deputy mayor Thomas Baker (himself an antiquarian) reported that the series had had 124 subscribers ("a sufficiently large list"), and that the original engraved plates were by that point in the hands of private collectors—with most owned by John Knowles.

Eight pencil drawings in the style of the Views (all dated 1822) were uncovered by a private collector in 1875 and published in the book Olde Manchester to "complete" the set, but Smithy Door was not among them.

The Royal Manchester Institution (as it would shortly become known) purchased a plot of land on Mosley Street for the construction of a large headquarters and exhibition space, designed by the architect Charles Barry, in 1825.

For example, The Manchester Courier's report on a September 1830 exhibition at the Royal Institution noted that Ralston's Storm is "[a] most splendid and spirited production; the execution is vigorous, and the colouring deep and effective, though tender ... and [we] very much doubt if there be half a dozen men in the kingdom who could surpass it," but then added that it was "(unsold!

[40] The historian Janet Wolff has pointed out that Ralston was not unusual at this time, noting that the stereotype of the "starving artist" was very much grounded in fact in 19th century Manchester.

The author reported that Ralston's cause of death was "ossification of the heart," which they believed to be a literalised manifestation of his heartbreak at never achieving popular recognition:...[H]e drew and painted from nature with unabated enthusiasm until within a few days of his decease; indeed, when entirely confined to his bed, "the ruling passion, strong even in death," still swayed him, and it gave him pleasure to converse on subjects of Art with those of his professional brethren who hastened to cheer in his sickness one whom they admired for his genius, and loved for the plain, manly, simplicity of his character.

A more grateful man perhaps never existed; he never forgot a favor; and often have we heard him, with his peculiar strength and feeling, express his sense of obligation for those little kindnesses and attentions which are usually suffered to pass without observation, as the every day offices of "gentle humanity."

The merely pretty and ornamental he despised, he looked for mind, and grappled with a giant's strength with the real difficulties of Art―he dived deep, and not merely skimmed the surface; hence, to superficial observers, his works seemed rude and tasteless.

Our answer is (in conjunction with the causes before glanced at) that he was a shy, sensitive, retiring man; he obtruded not his claims on public attention, he suffered in quiet, and at last sunk under the benumbing influence of continued neglect—he is, however, gone to his rest, and it would be useless to enlarge on the causes which embittered his declining days.

")[16] The Manchester Times published a similarly sympathetic obituary:[A]n artist whose excellence in his peculiar walk of art (marine painting) failed to meet with that due appreciation it so eminently deserved—added to which, the cold neglect endured from, the warmth of whose patronising influence ought to have shone on the summer of his life, conjointly produced that "sickness of the soul" (the immediate cause of his dissolution) so keenly felt in the sensitive minds of most professors of art, and from which he only found alleviation in the fondness for his profession and the affectionate endearments of his family, who, let us hope, may now derive that support from his works they so richly deserve, as they gain an additional worth from the knowledge that he who stamped the canvas with its value no longer feels— The whips and spurs of time, The proud man's contumely,—

[54][55] However, James Astbury Hammersley, head of the Manchester School of Art and one of the organisers, insisted in his speech to mark the opening that he welcomed visitors making comparisons between the works in both exhibitions, confident that the city's artists could hold their own against the world's best.