The French sculptor Emmanuel Frémiet specialised in small-scale bronzes of animals and also of soldiers and equestrian figures. At the Salon in Paris in 1866, he exhibited a bronze almost 1.5m high which he called (inscribed on its plinth) 'Cavalier Romain'. This was an equestrian figure of a Roman cavalry soldier, holding a lance at 45 degress to his body under his right upper arm. Frémiet immediately went on to produce a much smaller variation on this theme, which is seen here, where the figure holds a lance upright (across the top of which was probably originally attached a banner, as seen in other examples). This became one of Frémiet's most reproduced works. The South Kensington Museum (later called V&A) bought this particular example in 1896.

In 1840 Frémiet had entered the studio of Jacques-Christophe Werner, lithographer and principal painter at the Muséum National d’histoire naturelle, France’s National Museum of Natural History in the Jardin des Plantes, Paris. Here he first studied anatomy and drew studies of animals from life and later succeeded Antoine-Louis Barye as Professor of Drawing. He was influenced by Barye, famous for his animal sculptures, and also by François Rude under whom he had studied sculpture. The V&A has a number of small-scale bronzes of animals by him as well as an example of his much praised later bronze, St George slaying the Dragon.