Original carte-de-visite portrait signed and inscribed by Alexandre Dumas.
Albumen print photograph on mount. Stamp of Charles Reutlinger's studio in Paris on verso.
Very fine portrait signed and inscribed on the lower part of the mount: "A Madame aimée Persat, A. Dumas".
Probably gifted to the second wife of Maurice Persat, an officer who took part in the Napoleonic Wars as well as Independence uprisings in Latin America, Spain and Greece, where he bought back a young Turkish slave, Adélé. Back in France, she was placed in a convent under the protection of the governor of Marseille and converted to Catholicism. Persat, a liberal and agitator, was forced into exile in the meantime. Dumas undoubtedly drew inspiration from Adélé's story, relayed in the Marseille papers for his famous Monte Cristo heroine Haydé. The real-life Haydé died of phtisis along with her child in 1832. Persat remarried in 1854 to Henriette Charles Latour, to whom this portrait by Dumas is certainly inscribed.