Unidentified performer

According to the photographer's credit printed recto in the lower margin, this portrait of an unidentified performer was taken by Madame Disdéri.

Geneviève Elisabeth Francart married Disdéri in 1843. During the 1850s she ran her own studio in Brest, while her husband attempted to establish himself as a photographer, first in Nîmes and then in Paris. According to Elizabeth Anne McCauley, 'presumably with the assistance of several other employees and family members, [she] continued to run her own atelier in Brest unil the late 1860s' (A.A.E. Disdéri and the Carte de Visite Portrait Photograph, 1985). According to the same source, she was a silent partner when Disdéri reincorporated his business in September 1857. She apparently 'arrived in Paris and set up a separate studio at 146 rue due Bac' in 'about 1872,' though I would have thought her name on this carte placed her in the city, working alongside her husband, at least five years earlier.

According to McCauley, Madame Disdéri maintained her studio in the rue du Bac 'until her death in 1878 in a Paris public hospital.'