Arthur Arnould (1833–1895), a French writer and journalist, was elected to the Paris Commune Council in March 1871, and this albumen carte de visite presents a confident three-quarter bust portrait of him, printed on a pale cream card mount with a fine double-rule border. After a short administrative career at the Seine prefecture, Arnould became a journalist in opposition to the Second French Empire, and the image is consistent in style and printing with portraits circulating among Communard circles in the early 1870s. No photographer's imprint appears on the mount.

The subject is shown in slight three-quarter turn, his gaze directed to the subject's left, with a full, dark walrus mustache as the dominant facial feature against lightly silver-streaked hair swept back behind the ears. He wears a dark frock coat over a white shirt with a wide turndown collar and a dark cravat, rendered in the soft tonal gradations characteristic of albumen printing. His signature, "A. Arnould," is printed directly on the mount face below the image in a flowing cursive script.

Elected to the Commune Council by the IVth and VIIth arrondissements, Arnould later published a landmark account of the uprising titled "State and Revolution" in 1878, a work that preceded Lenin's famous text of the same name by four decades. He is listed in the French dictionary of anarchists, and his writings shaped the historical memory of the Paris Commune for subsequent generations of the French left.

Inscribed in pencil on the reverse "A. Arnould" at the top in a second hand, and below in print script "Arthur Arnould, Fr. Anarchist / 5/18/18 LOBAHZ Eb."