Boehm was surrounded by sculpture from a young age, his father served as a court medal maker and head of the imperial mint. At 14, he began studying at Leigh’s Academy of Art in London (now the Heatherley School of Fine Art). By 17, he had returned to Vienna to study model making and medal design before working in Paris and Italy. In 1856, he won the First Imperial Prize for Sculpture in Vienna. He settled in London in 1862, where he exhibited at the International Exhibition and began focusing on busts. His clients included Viscount Stratford Canning, painter John Everett Millais, composer Franz Liszt, and author William Makepeace Thackeray.
With a growing reputation came commissions by the aristocracy to create equestrian sculptures for their estates. In 1869, his work caught the attention of Queen Victoria, and he quickly became favored by the royal court. His marble statue of the Queen remains one of his most celebrated early works. Over his career, Boehm completed more than 40 royal commissions, including several sculptures of Queen Victoria for her Golden Jubilee.
One of the most influential stallions of all time, St. Simon was bred by Prince Gustavus Batthyany, a Hungarian-born naturalized Englishman whose horses were trained at Newmarket by John Dawson. St. Simon, foaled in 1881 at William Barrow’s Paddocks near Newmarket, was sired by Galopin out of St. Angela by King Tom. Undefeated, St. Simon became one of the greatest of his era. His victories, ranging from five furlongs to two and a half miles, included a dominant win in the Ascot Gold Cup, where he triumphed by 20 lengths and continued for another mile before being pulled up. Retiring to stud at age four, he proved equally successful, producing descendants who dominated global racing for decades.
St. Simon, measuring 16 hands (or 16.1 hands according to some sources), was a strikingly well-proportioned horse. His finely chiseled head, powerful shoulders, and strong hindquarters made him appear smaller than he was. His shoulder was notably oblique, extending far into his back, which made his body appear shorter. As the Bloodstock Breeders’ Review of 1916 noted, his shoulder placement was exceptional. Despite being over at the knee, a common feature in photographs of him, St. Simon’s fluid, elastic movements and exceptional physique earned him a lasting reputation in racing history.
Boehm, intimately familiar with equestrian imagery, captures the essence of St. Simon’s exceptional physical prowess, fluidity and grace - features that were central to his racing success. Boehm was often commissioned by members of the aristocracy to make equestrian and equine sculptures for the parks and gardens of their stately homes. Baron Mayer Amschel de Rothschild commissioned Boehm to produce a large sculpture of the stallion King Tom (1874) and The Horse and His Master (1874), sometimes known as A Clydesdale Stallion Rearing was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1874 and at the 1878 Paris Universal Exposition.