Georges Cavalier, nicknamed Pipe-en-Bois for his distinctive, angular features, was the journalist and engineer who served as Léon Gambetta’s secretary during the siege of Paris before becoming the Commune’s chief engineer of public roads and promenades. This carte de visite was produced by Etienne Carjat & Cie, Paris, at 10 Rue Notre-Dame-de-Lorette.

He appears in an oval vignette, half length, his head tilted slightly as he gazes off to one side. His hair is brushed back in a smooth wave, and he wears a dark coat with wide lapels over a waistcoat, a loosely knotted bow tie visible beneath a high white collar.

A Polytechnique-trained engineer who earned his nickname for jeering a Goncourt play in 1865, Cavalier replaced Jean-Charles Alphand as the Commune’s director of roads and promenades, overseeing the transport of fighters and munitions to the barricades. Tried by military tribunal after the Commune’s fall, his death sentence was commuted to ten years’ banishment, and he spent much of his exile in Brussels, where he became acquainted with Arthur Rimbaud and Paul Verlaine before his death in Paris in 1878.

The reverse is inscribed in pencil, “Cavalier / Pipe en bois,” and again, “George Cavalier / Communard,” over the printed studio imprint of Etienne Carjat & Cie, 10 Rue Notre-Dame-de-Lorette, Paris, with the archival notations “6/8/07,” “LOHGGZ,” and “Eb.”