Léontine Suétens, identified by the inscription “Suétens” on the reverse, was a laundress who served as a cantinière with the 135th Federated Battalion during the Paris Commune, following her partner, Sergeant-Major Louis Aubert, into the fighting at Neuilly, Issy, Vanves, and Levallois-Perret. The carte de visite was produced by E. Appert’s Paris studio at 24 Rue Taitbout.

She is shown seated, three-quarter length, her hands folded in her lap over a striped skirt. She wears a dark, loosely buttoned blouse with full sleeves, her hair parted and drawn back close to her head, her gaze directed to one side rather than toward the camera.

Wounded twice in the fighting, Suétens reached the Rue de Lille on May 22, 1871, during the final days of the Bloody Week, where she later testified to witnessing the construction of barricades and the movement of oil barrels linked to the fires that swept the city that week. After Aubert was killed at a barricade, she was arrested and denied any part in the burning, but was condemned to death by the 4th court-martial on September 4, 1871; the sentence was commuted that November to forced labor for life, and she was deported to French Guiana.

The reverse is inscribed in pencil, “Suétens,” over the printed studio imprint of E. Appert, Peintre Photographe, 24 Rue Taitbout, Paris.