Dauphin-Amable Petit (known as Amable) (1846–1916) was a French actor and set designer and scene painter. This photograph is possibly a study for one of his paintings. That it is reproduced in ink remains a mystery as does the exact process. It is likely an early collotype by Arosa who was the publisher of the prints done by Marechel and Motay’s collotype process.

Charles-Marie Tessie du Motay (d.1880) and C. R. Maréchal of Metz (English patent of 1865) were the first to commercialize the collotype process, and under the financial backing of Gustave Arosa, produced about eight sumptuous books, but like so many of these new ideas, this one seems to have been too expensive to compete with cheap wood engraving at the time or did not have time to develop due to the Franco-Prussian War. [1]