Gustave Maroteau, identified by name on the reverse, was the young journalist behind several Commune-era newspapers, including Le Faubourg, La Montagne, and Le Salut Public, whose fiery editorials made him, in the assessment of contemporaries, one of the Commune’s most forceful writers. The carte de visite was produced by E. Gatel’s Paris studio at 173 Palais Royal, successor to the firm of E. Bondonneau.

He is shown bust length within an oval vignette, his head turned slightly from the camera beneath a mass of loosely curling hair. A full beard and mustache frame his mouth, and he wears a heavy fur-trimmed coat over a waistcoat, with a dark cravat loosely knotted beneath an open collar.

Maroteau’s newspaper La Montagne continued printing behind the barricades even as the Commune’s other papers fell silent, and an article in its pages calling for the execution of the Archbishop of Paris later became central evidence against him. Tried by the Council of War in October 1871 and condemned to death, his sentence was commuted to deportation following public appeals, including one from Victor Hugo, and he was transported to New Caledonia in 1872, where he died of tuberculosis in 1875 at the age of twenty-five.

The reverse is inscribed in pencil, “Gve Maroteau / Gustave Louis Maroteau (1849-1875) / Paris Commune,” over the printed studio imprint of E. Gatel, Photographe Éditeur, Galerie de Valois, 173 (Palais Royal), Paris, with the archival notations “3/21/07,” “LOFGEZ,” and “Eb.”