Émile Guillemin

**Émile Coriolan Hippolyte Guillemin** (16 October 1841 – 1907) was a French sculptor of the Belle Époque.

He worked in bronze. He studied under his father, the painter Auguste Guillemin, and under . He showed work at the Salon of Paris from 1870 to 1899, and in 1897 received an honourable mention at Musée du Louvre de Paris.
In 2008 his 1884 bronze sculpture Femme Kabyle d'Algerie and Janissaire du Sultan Mahmoud II (_Femme kabyle d'Algérie_ et _Janissaire du sultan Mahmoud II_) sold for $1,202,500 plus auction fees in New York to a private collector through Sotheby's Auction House.

His equestrian sculpture, _Cavalier Arabe_ is signed both by him and by Alfred Barye.

It began at the Salon des Artistes Français in 1870, with two plaster sculptures of Roman gladiators, the bronze casts of which were acquired by the State for the Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye. Guillemin collaborates with major art publishing houses, such as Barbedienne and Christofle.

Emile Coriolan Hippolyte Guillemin made his debut in the Paris Salon of 1870 where he exhibited a pair of Roman gladiators, Retaire and Mirmillon, drawn from antiquity. Guillemin specialized in figurative works and was greatly inspired by the Middle East and its exoticism. Representations of Indian falconers, Turkish maidens, and Japanese courtesans firmly established Guillemin's reputation as an Orientalist sculptor from the mid-1870s.

Guillemin continued to exhibit at the Salon des Artistes Français until the end of the 1890s, where he showcased a series of busts of Oriental women in bronze. His busts are part of the Orientalist movement and therefore reflect a particular context: Guillemin traveled to North Africa and the Mediterranean Basin to identify the anthropological characteristics of different local cultures.

In 2008, the pair of statues he made in 1884, which are known as e _Femme kabyle d'Algérie_ et _Janissaire du sultan Mahmoud II_ was  sold at an auction at Sotheby's, in New York, for a sum of  1,202,500 USD, without charges.

## Museums

- Canada
- Montreal, Montreal Museum of Fine Arts : _Eliezer and Rebecca_.

- United States
- Ocala,  : _Arab Cavalier_, circa 1900, bronze, in collaboration with Alfred Barye.
- Stanford, Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Center for Visual Arts : _Napoleon_, bronze statuette.
- Greenville, Bob Jones University : _Rebecca Giving Water to Abraham's Servant_, circa 1870-1895, bronze group.

- France
- Paris :
    - Louvre : pair of _Moorish Women_ (attributed), bronze statues; _Arab Horse_.
    - Musée d'Orsay : _Aurora_, 1867, gilded bronze plaque adorning the lower part of a cabinet by Charles-Guillaume Diehl.

## Related pages

- Alberto Giacometti
- Louvre

## Other websites

- Sotheby's Auctions Émile Guillemin European art of the 9th century, including Islamic and Orientalist art, Émile-Coriolan-Hippolyte Guillemin (Paris, 1841-1907), _Femme Kabyle d'Algerie and Jamissaire du Sultan Mahmoud II_ the female figure signed and dated _Guillemin/1884_, the male signed _ Ele Guillemin _, bronze, silver, gold and polychrome patina with colored hard stone cabochons, both raised on an Italian marble pedestal Rosso Levanto of masculine height 36-inch (91.5 cm), sold for $1,202,500, Sotheby's, New York, October 21, 2008.

## Infobox (artist)

- **name**: Émile Guillemin
- **birth date**: 16 October 1841
- **birth place**: Paris, France
- **field**: Bronze sculpture
- **training**: Émile Auguste Marie Guillemin, Jean-Jules Salmson
- **movement**: Orientalism, Islamic Art
- **death date**: 1907
- **death place**: Paris