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William Lawrence's Dublin photographic studio first opened in March, 1865 as an adjunct to his mother's store which sold toys and fancy goods. The great demand for the new art of photography centered mostly on portraiture and Lawrence soon found himself managing a business that employed a team of photographers, printers and retouching artists. Beginning around 1880, he began to produce albums of Irish scenes, eventually covering the entire island. So popular were these scenic albums with Irish immigrants in America, that in 1897 he began a weekly series, printed in Chicago, titled "Ireland in Pictures" which featured over 500 images. This is most likely one of those photographs. Also in 1890's, a new opportunity arose when the post office allowed picture postcards to be mailed without envelopes and the era of the "penny postcard" was born. The National Library of Ireland holds more than 40,000 of the Lawrence Company's glass negatives, many of which can be viewed online.