Émile-Coriolan-Hippolyte Guillemin French, 1841-1907

Guillemin was one of the most prolific and successful French Orientalist sculptors.  He exhibited regularly at the Paris Salon, where from 1877 he submitted works on exclusively Orientalist themes.  His first example in this genre was the marble and bronze bust of the Femme Mauresque which initiated a series of busts of beautiful Oriental women including the present bust of the Jeune fille kurde (type de l'Asie mineure) in 1879, the Jeune fille du Caire in 1880, Dame musulmane in 1882, Jeune fille mauresque d’Alger and Jeune fille juive d’Alger both in 1883, Femme kabyle d’Algérie in 1884 and finally another mixed bronze and marble bust in 1895, Type algérien, femme de la tribu Ouled Nails.  This impressive group of busts ensured Guillemin’s reputation as the sculptor of Middle Eastern beauty par excellence.  His approach to his subjects was not simply decorative and, as in the work of Charles Cordier, Guillemin went to great lengths to ensure the ethnographic accuracy of the costumes and physiognomies of his busts.  Guillemin was equally fully aware of the highly decorative potential of his busts and appreciated the value of having male and female pendant busts, thus at the 1879 Salon he also exhibited the present bust of Zeibeck, soldat irrégulier turc des environs de Smyrne. The Tiffany stamp on the latter bust indicates the popularity of the Orientalist genre in America following the success of the Turkish bazaar at the 1876 Philadelphia International Exhibition.

RELATED LITERATURE
Explication des ouvrages de peinture, sculpture, architecture, gravure et lithographie des artistes vivants, exposés au Palais des Champs-Elysées le 12 Mai 1879, Paris, 1879, p. 440, nos. 5082 and 5083