Abbé Gaspard Deguerry, curé of the Église de la Madeleine, was one of the most prominent clergymen in Paris when he was taken hostage by the Commune and shot at La Roquette prison alongside Archbishop Georges Darboy on May 24, 1871. The carte de visite was produced by Pierre Petit’s Paris studio at 31 Place Cadet, though the sitter’s name is misspelled on the mount as “Dugerry” and “Dequerry.”

He is shown standing, full length, in black clerical robes with a long coat draped open over his cassock, a white clerical collar and bands at his throat. He holds a wide-brimmed clerical hat at his side in one hand, his white hair curling loosely around a bare crown, his gaze directed slightly off-camera.

Appointed curé of the Madeleine in 1849 after earlier serving as archpriest of Notre-Dame, Deguerry was among the most celebrated preachers of his day, delivering Lenten sermons before both Charles X and Napoleon III and administering last rites to Chateaubriand in 1848. Arrested on the order of Commune police delegate Raoul Rigault on April 5, 1871, he was held at La Roquette for seven weeks before his execution, one of the Commune’s most widely condemned acts during the final days of the Bloody Week.

The reverse is signed in ink, “Dequerry,” and the recto bears the inscription “M. Dugerry,” both evident misspellings of the sitter’s name, over the printed studio imprint of Pierre Petit, Opère Lui Même, 31 Place Cadet, Paris, noting the Exposition Universelle 1867, with the archival notations “8/07/10,” “LODECZ,” and “Eb.”