Charles Hugo's half-length portrait of close family friend, and collaborator on the spirited journal "L'Événement", Auguste Vacquerie, is affectionate and intimate. Made on the Isle of Jersey where in 1853 both escaped political persecution, Vacquerie is pictured here seated on what was possibly a bale of hay in front of a stone wall, absorbed in reading a book. Charles Hugo learned the basics of photography from Edmond Bacot, an early daguerreotypist, in Caen.