Paul Bert, one of the most consequential figures of the French Third Republic, physiologist and republican statesman, sits for this carte de visite portrait signed and identified on the mount as “Paul Bert, Minist. d’Education.” The photograph was produced by the Photographie Universelle studio of Th. Truchelut & Valkman, Paris, as part of their “Célébrités Contemporaines” series.<br><br>He is shown in half length, turned slightly from the camera, dressed in a heavy dark coat with a wide collar over a loosely tied cravat and high white collar. His dark hair is swept back from a broad forehead, and a full beard and mustache frame a steady, direct gaze.<br><br>A protégé of Claude Bernard who succeeded him in the chair of physiology at the Sorbonne, Bert built his scientific reputation on studies of oxygen and atmospheric pressure before turning to politics as a close ally of Léon Gambetta. He served as Minister of Public Instruction and Religious Affairs from November 1881 to January 1882, working alongside Jules Ferry to establish France’s free, secular, and compulsory school system, and later became the first French Resident General of Annam and Tonkin, dying in Hanoi in 1886.<br><br>The reverse is inscribed in pencil, “Paul Bert” and “Paul Bert, Zoologist, Physiologist,” over the printed studio imprint of Photographie Universelle, Th. Truchelut & Valkman, 16 Rue de Lancry (ci-devant 17 Rue de Grammont), Boulevart St Martin, Paris, “Célébrités Contemporaines,” with the archival notations “5/18/10” and “LOCDBZ.”