Richard Opie was the eldest child of the Cornish portrait painter of the same name and Agnes Andrew. As a young child he lived in Stithians until the mid-1820s, when his father began to travel in Cornwall and to Plymouth as he established his reputation, and probably obtained commissions, as a portrait painter. The family lived for a time in Falmouth, where the younger Richard Opie was listed as a 'carver and gilder' in the 1841 census, and he may have been working alongside his father as a picture frame maker. By 1844, in his 30th year, the younger Richard Opie was listed in a Plymouth trade directory. Two years later he married Matilda Howell, and they lived in Plymouth with their family, where his parents were also living by 1851.