A carte-de-visite portrait of Eulalie Papavoine, a seamstress and ambulance worker attached to the 135th Battalion who was held as a prisoner at the Chantiers prison in Versailles following the fall of the Paris Commune in 1871. Appert, a Parisian portrait photographer, gained exclusive access to the makeshift prison at Versailles, where he made portraits of individual prisoners who ceded the rights to their likenesses, later issuing many of the portraits as cartes-de-visites. The albumen print mount carries the printed imprint of E. Appert at 24, Rue Taitbout, Paris, with the notation "Phot. Expert / Déposé" on the recto.

Papavoine is shown seated in a three-quarter pose, arms folded tightly across her chest, wearing a dark long-sleeved dress over a lighter skirt, her hair pulled back close to the scalp and gathered at the nape. Her expression is direct and guarded, her gaze meeting the lens without concession. The plain light studio ground provides no distraction from the figure itself.

The Communard trials held by the military tribunal following the Paris Commune's Bloody Week were the first time photography was used for trial purposes, comprising the world's first formal mug shots; Appert supplied his portraits to the military tribunal and offered them as tokens for the families of prisoners. Appert, accredited to the Tribunal de la Seine, is sometimes cited as a forerunner of bertillonage, the systematic photographic identification system later formalized by Alphonse Bertillon.

The reverse bears the full printed studio imprint of E. Appert, Peintre Photographe, 24 Rue Taitbout, Paris, listing silver medals from 1853, 1855, 1859, and 1867, together with his designations as Photographe du Corps Législatif and Photographe de la Magistrature. Inscribed in pencil at the upper center of the reverse is "papavoine" (Papavoine).