This CDV reproduces a caricature illustration rather than a photographic portrait, depicting a disheveled insurgent figure identified on the mount as a Montmartre "Red" of 1871, a partisan type associated with the Paris Commune. The London Stereoscopic and Photographic Company was one of the most successful photographic companies of the nineteenth century, and the card's reverse identifies the publisher as operating from 110 and 108 Regent Street and 54 Cheapside, London. The image carries a copyright notice on the front mount, indicating it was a commercially produced and distributed title.

The central figure is rendered in a loose, satirical drawing style and wears a battered round hat with a feathered band, a long ragged coat, epaulette fringe on the shoulders, and boots; a sword and pistol are tucked into a wide belt, and a rifle is slung over the shoulder. A banner in the background reads "Fraternité ou La Mort" (Brotherhood or Death), and cannon barrels and broken timber fill the scene behind him. The printed caption below the image names the subject as "A Montmartre 'Red' of 1871" and describes the figure in satirical anti-Commune terms.

The Paris Commune was proclaimed after elections were held on 28 March 1871, following the Franco-Prussian War, and fraternization with the army by the women of Montmartre foiled the government's attempt to remove the cannons that helped spark the insurrection. The London Stereoscopic Company's card reflects the strongly conservative, anti-Commune viewpoint prevalent in the British press during and after the Commune's suppression.

The reverse bears the green-printed imprint of The London Stereoscopic and Photographic Company, listing offices at 110 and 108 Regent Street and 54 Cheapside, with royal warrant lines crediting the firm as photographers to H.R.H. the Prince of Wales and H.R.H. the Duke of Edinburgh, and noting their role as sole photographers to the International Exhibition of 1862. A pencil notation at the lower left of the reverse reads "2/22/09 COLAEZ Eb."