Emile Coriolan Hippolyte Guillemin

Guillemin was born in Paris on 16 October 1841, the son of the painter Auguste (Emile Marie Auguste) Guillemin. English language market references, including major auction houses and price databases, confirm the birth year 1841 but not the exact day, which is documented in French language reference sources. He trained in his father's atelier and under the sculptor Jean Jules Salmson; no formal academy enrollment or degree is documented in any consulted source, consistent with the atelier based training common to sculptors of his generation.

He debuted at the Paris Salon in 1870, building a reputation for bronze figures on Orientalist and exotic themes, including North African and Ottoman subjects, alongside decorative genre busts. The consulted record does not establish how long his Salon participation continued. One source describes an honourable mention at the Salon in 1897, though this is not corroborated elsewhere in the consulted record. He died in Paris, in the 11th arrondissement, on 26 December 1907 according to French language sources; the major English language market references (auction houses, price databases, and museum-adjacent reference sites) confirm only the year 1907.

The available record for Guillemin is a market and reference record rather than a critical one. No exact, attributable quotation from a named critic in a major outlet turned up for this artist, period or contemporary. What exists instead is a consistent dealer and cataloguing description of his work as finely modeled and richly finished, squarely within the Orientalist taste that was fashionable at the Paris Salon in the final decades of the nineteenth century. His two documented distinctions, a Salon debut in 1870 and a single-source honourable mention in 1897, mark him as a respected but not top tier Salon sculptor of his generation.

Guillemin's market is entirely a secondary one; he left no studio, estate, or representing gallery. His auction record is USD 1,202,500, a hammer price excluding buyer's premium, for a bronze sculpture group, Femme Kabyle d'Algerie and Janissaire du Sultan Mahmoud II, dated 1884, sold at Sotheby's New York on 21 October 2008. No source in the current research turned up a later sale exceeding that figure.

Below that record, his bronzes trade steadily through major and regional auction houses, including Christie's, Sotheby's, Heritage Auctions, and John Moran Auctioneers, as well as specialist decorative arts dealers such as Wolf's Gallery. Prices vary widely by subject, size, and the condition of the cold-painted (polychrome) finish, and buyers should expect a wide spread between a small signed bust and a large figural group.

There is no catalogue raisonne, no estate, and no gallery currently representing Guillemin's work; authentication rests on foundry marks, signatures, casting quality, and provenance rather than any centralized authority. Because he worked in an editioned medium, collectors should also expect "after Guillemin" or posthumous cast attributions in the market, which trade at a significant discount to lifetime casts, and sale listings should be read carefully for that distinction. With only one widely documented seven figure result and a comparatively thin, slow moving auction record, individual sale prices should be treated as data points rather than as a stable index of value.