The Berger Brothers

A carte-de-visite portrait of two billiard players with cues, identified by a pencilled inscription verso in a period hand as the Berger brothers.

The man on the right is the champion billiard player Claudius Berger, author of Principes du jeu de billiard (1855). A short man, he had to stand on a box for some shots. According to George Augustus Sale, he possessed 'perhaps more power of the cue than any man living.'

He died, aged 57, at Thoissey in eastern France on 8 October 1875.

Photographed by Mayer and Pierson of Paris.