Jules Simon, born François-Jules Suisse, was the philosopher and statesman who taught at the Sorbonne before entering politics, serving as a leading moderate republican through the Second Empire and into the Third Republic, where he briefly held the premiership in 1876-77. This carte de visite was produced by Eugène Thiébault’s Paris studio at 31 Boulevard Bonne Nouvelle, the reverse carrying the succession imprint of Bacard Fils, Gendre et Successeur.

He is shown in half length, turned slightly from the camera, his balding head fringed with curling white hair and a closely trimmed beard and mustache along his jawline. He wears a dark coat over a loosely knotted bow tie and high white collar, his expression steady and composed.

A professor of philosophy who lectured on Plato and Aristotle at the Sorbonne, Simon was dismissed from his academic posts after refusing to accept Louis-Napoléon’s 1851 coup, and he went on to become a vocal opposition deputy under the Second Empire and a minister of education in the early Third Republic. He served as prime minister from December 1876 to May 1877, a tenure cut short by Marshal MacMahon during the political crisis of Seize Mai, and was later elected to the Académie française in 1875.

The reverse is inscribed in pencil, “Jules Simon / French Statesman and Philosopher (1814-1896),” over the printed studio imprint of Photographie Thiébault, 31 Boulevard Bonne Nouvelle, 31, en face le théâtre du Gymnase, Bacard Fils, Gendre & Successeur, with the archival notations “3/02/07,” “COLAEZ,” and “Eb.”