Authors and composers

A carte-de-visite showing a mosaic of more than eighty authors and composers who had visited Disdéri’s studio. Disdéri’s catalogue No. 5, dated 15 March 1861, lists only forty-three sitters under the heading ‘Ecrivains, auteurs et compositeur’ so presumably this collage was assembled slightly later in the decade, by which date more figures of note in these fields had sat for their portraits.

In the upper left-hand corner, Giuseppe Verdi can easily be recognized; Guizot, Thiers and Girardin also appear in the top row. Others featured include the entomologist Hippolyte Lucas; the author and playwright Mario Uchard; the comte de Falloux, politician, historian and author; André Dupin, lawyer and author; Octave Feuillet, dramatist and novelist; and Alphonse Karr, critic, journalist and novelist.