Stephens on Boehm
The biographical sketch of Joseph Edgar Boehm, R.A., 1st Baronet of Wetherby Gardens, written by the author and editor of Artists at Home, Frederick George Stephens in 1884, covers the Hungarian-born English sculptor and medalist’s achievements through a list of exhibited works and public monuments. Stephens highlights the childhood of Boehm as an important catalyst for his later development as a prominent and successful artist. His father, Herr Daniel Boehm, Director of the Imperial Mint in Vienna, had amassed a considerable art collection; as a result, Boehm was exposed to opportunities that cemented his early knowledge of antiquity during his childhood. Stephens’s biography of Boehm seems to be little more than a catalogue: the author offers an exhaustive list of the sculptor’s works executed in marble, terra-cotta, and bronze, among other materials, as well as Boehm’s achievements and awards; yet apart from a brief mention of the artist’s rapid ascent “in popularity and aristocratic favour,” he leaves readers in the dark about the motivations and beliefs of the sculptor and his stylistic approaches, and about his own attitude towards the artist or his works (73). However, the list of Boehm’s works provided by Stephens illustrates the ubiquity of the works by the sculptor, who had produced portraits of virtually every important figure in Victorian culture—many of which ended up in some of the most important and revered buildings in Britain, including the bust of the Marquis of Lansdowne for Westminster Abbey and the statue of the Late Archbishop of Canterbury for Canterbury Cathedral. The list, which Stephens admits “besides these there is a very numerous array of busts, statues, statuettes, reliefs, and other works representing persons of less reputation…and executed in marble, bronze, and terra-cotta,” is carefully selected by the author to demonstrate Boehm’s extraordinarily prolific and illustrious career (74).
From the biography alone, readers can see the artist’s flexibility in his ability to create statues, busts, and monuments through a variety of materials and subject matter. Boehm's Bust of a Gentleman, produced in 1862, captured the public’s attention for its use of terra-cotta—an unusual medium at that time—and its intrinsic merits. The highest number of Boehm’s commissions were from aristocrats, esteemed figures, and royalty, such as the Duke of Beaufort, General C. Grey, the Prince of Wales, the Duke of Kent, Princess Alice, and even Queen Victoria herself (74), which shows that portrait busts dominate the sculptor’s work, and further confirms Stephens’s assertion of Boehm’s role as an extremely popular and fashionable court sculptor.
Stephens’s biography of Boehm does not examine the artist’s close relationship with the queen, to whom he was appointed Sculptor in Ordinary, or with her daughter Princess Louise, who was Boehm’s most famous pupil.
Albertine Lee
Note: After Boehm's death, F. G. Stephens published in The Athenaeum an obituary drawn largely from his text for Artists at Home. "The deceased had, as it was remarked in 'Artists at Home,' produced more public statues than any artist of this country, from Flaxman to Foley," Stephens writes. "This was true six years ago, when the statement was printed, and it is true to the present time. As the sculptor himself revised the memoir, we cannot do better than borrow its data." [F. G. Stephens], “Sir Joseph Edgar Boehm, Bart., R.A.,” The Athenaeum, no. 3295 (December 20, 1890): 861.
LM