Little is known about Randal, but John Ruskin commissioned more works from him than any other artist in the Ruskin Collection. Randal was from London, born in 1852. The 1871 census shows that he was a jeweller's assistant at that time.

He appears to have caught the attention of John Ruskin in 1881, who firstly employed him as an agent to help him with his work on Amiens and also started to commission drawings from him. Continuing to teach Randal via correspondence, Ruskin gave him a salary from the Guild of St George's fund. Randal’s work for the Guild of St George continued until 1887 and during this time he produced at least 137 drawings and watercolours for the Guild. They range from medieval French architecture and sculpture, street scenes, stained glass and Italian architectural and landscape scenes, to natural history studies and copies after the Renaissance painters.

Later, Randal worked for Sir Sydney Cockerell, painting architectural records for the Society for the Preservation of Pictorial Records of Ancient Works of Art, and had private patrons too, who commissioned architectural studies and copies of famous works of art. He received a number of commissions for a prominent Sheffield art collector, George Parkes Wall, who founded the Pluto Steelworks, Sheffield.