Alphonse-Marie-Louis de Prat de Lamartine (1790-1869), poet and statesman, a member of the Académie française from 1829, and briefly French Foreign Minister during the 1848 uprising. His most famous work was his first collection of poems: Les Méditations Poétiques (1820).
“J.A.L., Paris — 1858,” perhaps a member of the Hamilton or Schuyler families of New York. A carte de visite by the man who patented the process in 1854: André-Adolph-Eugène Disdéri (1819-1889). His rival Nadar [Gaspard-Félix Tournachon, 1820-1910] lamented “the appearance of Disdéri and [the] Carte de Visite... It spelled disaster. Either you had to succumb – that is to say, follow the trend – or resign.”
