[1] His grandfather was the Reading brewer and banker William Blackall Simonds.

[1] He was a brother-in-law of the portrait painter John Collingham Moore and a cousin of the botanist George Simonds Boulger.

His best known works are The Falconer (1873) in Central Park, New York City, and the Maiwand Lion (1886) in the Forbury Gardens, Reading, England.

[1] In 1922, Simonds temporarily came out of retirement to build the war memorial in Bradfield, the village where he lived in Berkshire.

This commemorates the deaths of local men in the First World War, including his son, a lieutenant in the 2nd Battalion the South Wales Borderers.