In 1862, Boehm settled in London, where he exhibited coins and medals at the 1862 International Exhibition, opened a studio and had his first work, a terracotta bust, shown at the Royal Academy. Throughout the 1860s, Boehm, who became a British subject in 1865, devoted his time to the production of portrait busts plus equestrian statues and statuettes. His portrait subjects included John Everett Millais, Stratford Canning and Charles Thomas Newton and Franz Liszt. Boehm's statuette of William Makepiece Thackeray, although completed after the author's death, was considered such a good likeness that several copies were made including examples for the Garrick Club and for the Athenaeum.