Stanislas Lami

Stanislas Lami was born in Paris on 30 November 1858, the son of the sculptor Alphonse Lami and grandson of the landscape painter Francois-Xavier Bidault, placing him in an artistic family across two generations. He trained in the atelier of the painter Albert Lebourg; no formal academy degree is documented for him.

Lami made his Salon debut in 1882 with the plaster Mendiant aveugle and went on to exhibit regularly at the Salon des Artistes Francais until 1942, a career spanning roughly sixty years. He received honors at the Salons and international expositions of 1887, 1889, 1890, and 1891, and showed internationally in Munich in 1892, Brussels in 1897, and at the 1900 Exposition universelle in Paris, where his Le Silence earned a bronze medal. The French state purchased his marble Premiere faute for 7,500 francs in 1891, later assigning it to a teacher-training school in Fontenay-aux-Roses in 1932, and the City of Paris purchased his bust L'Eveil for 4,000 francs in 1922. He was made a Chevalier of the Legion of Honour in 1900 and promoted to Officier in 1913.

Alongside his sculpture, Lami compiled a major biographical dictionary of French sculptors, a work of scholarship on French sculpture from the medieval period through the nineteenth century that the Institut national d'histoire de l'art still cites as a foundational reference. He died in his studio at 7 Villa Scheffer in the 16th arrondissement of Paris on 31 January 1944, at the age of 85.

No verbatim critical assessments from named critics in major outlets could be confirmed for this profile, so none are reproduced here. What is documented is a pattern of official recognition: medals at the Salon and at international expositions across 1887 to 1900, purchases of his work by the French state and the City of Paris, and his elevation to Officier of the Legion of Honour in 1913. His scholarship earned recognition on its own terms; the INHA's critical dictionary of art historians includes him as a historian of French sculpture, a rare case of a working sculptor also being treated as a primary reference source for the field.

The highest price reported for Lami's work at auction is USD 134,905 for 'Nude with doves,' at Sotheby's London in 2010, per the art-market database MutualArt; that source does not give an exact sale date and no second source could be located to corroborate it, so the figure should be read as reported rather than fully verified. A separate secondary-market valuation guide indicates that his sculptures generally trade in a range of roughly EUR 200 to 50,000, without a documented top sale attached to that range. At least one major auction house has catalogued a Lami bust of Rembrandt under a birth year of 1848 rather than the documented 1858, an identity detail collectors should check carefully when matching lots to the artist's biography. Given the size of the market and the reliance on a single reported record price, valuation for his work leans more heavily on comparable Salon-period academic sculpture and on museum-grade provenance than on any single benchmark sale.

Lami has been dead since 1944, and his sixty-year Salon career means his output is well documented in period exhibition and state-purchase records rather than resting on later attribution. There is no catalogue raisonne of his sculptural work, so authentication depends on Salon records, the INHA AGORHA archive, and museum or auction provenance. The auction market for his work is thin; the highest reported price is USD 134,905 for 'Nude with doves' at Sotheby's London in 2010 (MutualArt), but that figure rests on a single source without a confirmed exact date, so any auction estimate should be treated cautiously. Buyers should also cross-check birth and death dates, correctly 1858 to 1944, against sale catalogs, since at least one major auction house has published an incorrect birth year. Works are most often signed "St. Lami," and the strongest anchors for his standing are the museum-held examples at the Musee d'Orsay, the Petit Palais, and the Paris Opera.