This cabinet card offers a rare glimpse of Charles Eisenmann, the leading photographer of sideshow and dime museum performers, appearing within one of his own portraits rather than behind the camera. Images including Eisenmann as a subject are seldom found. He stands at right, gazing up at the towering central figure identified in a period inscription as Col. Barts.

Col. Barts wears a military-style tunic with epaulettes, a decorative button closure, white trousers, and embroidered boots, a costume meant to lend an air of authority to his stature. He stands arm in arm with a woman in a dark silk bustle gown trimmed with ruffled tiers and a lace collar. Eisenmann, bearded and in a long dark frock coat, stands at right with hands folded, gazing upward.

The three-figure arrangement, contrasting a giant with a woman of average height, follows the promotional formula common to touring dime museum and sideshow exhibitions of the 1870s and 1880s, dramatizing scale for exhibition audiences and souvenir card buyers.

The reverse bears a period pencil inscription reading Col. Barts, a catalog notation c660c, and a price marking of $25.00.

From the collection of James Lee Soffer