Achille Lyon, identified by the signature “Lyon” on the reverse, was a Paris shoe cutter and former soldier who served as a sergeant in the 4th Marching Company of the 73rd Battalion of the National Guard at the outbreak of the Commune on March 18, 1871. The carte de visite was produced by E. Appert’s Paris studio at 24 Rue Taitbout.

He is shown in half length, his head turned slightly from the camera with a direct, wide-eyed gaze. His hair falls loosely across his forehead, and a full beard and mustache frame his mouth. He wears a dark, loosely buttoned coat over a waistcoat, with a white shirt collar open at the throat.

A veteran who had already been decorated for service in the Crimean and Italian campaigns, Lyon maintained at his trial that he had been forced to resign his lieutenant’s commission in April 1871 after refusing to accompany his battalion to Fort Issy, and that he took no part in the street fighting that followed. The 7th Court Martial nonetheless sentenced him on March 4, 1872, to deportation to a fortified enclosure; he died on the Ducos peninsula in New Caledonia on November 18, 1876, before an administrative commutation of his sentence to simple deportation was issued the following year.

The reverse is signed in ink, “Lyon,” over the printed studio imprint of E. Appert, Peintre Photographe, 24 Rue Taitbout, Paris.