Historical Record · Dublin, c.1912–1916
Henry Street Before the Easter Rising — A Bobs Studio Portrait
Bobs Studio, 16 Henry Street
Catalogue details
Description
An original mounted portrait from the short-lived Bobs Studio on Henry Street, Dublin — a photographic address directly touched by the destruction of the 1916 Rising.
- Date
- c.1912–1916
- Place
- 16 Henry Street, Dublin
- Country
- Ireland
- Category
- Irish Photography
- Studio
- Bobs Studio
- Extent / Pages
- 1 mounted photograph · recto and verso
- Dimensions
- Measurements gladly provided on request
- Subject
- Unidentified woman, bust-length portrait
- Reference
- TBH-IRL-PH-BOBS-C1912-1916
- Medium
- Original studio portrait on embossed card mount
- Condition
- Please consult the photographs for condition. Additional photographs are available on request.
Shipping quoted by destination before payment
Historical context & sources
Context, attribution and documentary significance.
The Studio
Bobs, 16 Henry Street — a brief Dublin photographic address.
The mount identifies the studio directly: Bobs, 16 Henry St., Dublin. Directory-based research into Dublin photographers places Bobs Studio at this address from 1911 to 1916 and states that the “Bobs” name was used from 1912. That evidence provides the working date range adopted for this portrait.
The Little Museum of Dublin preserves a surviving complimentary coupon specifically for “Bobs Studio” at 16 Henry Street, independently confirming the studio name and address as part of Dublin’s early twentieth-century retail landscape.
Henry Street before 1916
A commercial portrait made on a street about to be transformed.
Henry Street was one of the principal commercial streets on Dublin’s north side, running west from Sackville Street beside the General Post Office. The portrait was made during the final years before the Easter Rising, when this central district was both a retail centre and an important concentration of photographic and entertainment businesses.
National Archives of Ireland compensation records provide unusually direct evidence for the photographic premises at No. 16. Claim PLIC/1/0044 names photographers Henry George Brabazon and Percy Brewer and records stock-in-trade and fittings damaged at 16 Henry Street during the 1916 disturbances. The precise business relationship between those names and the Bobs trading name remains a subject for further research, but the archival record securely connects the address with professional photography and with the physical destruction of 1916.
The Portrait
A restrained studio image with the mount carrying the history.
The unidentified sitter is shown against an almost featureless pale background, wearing a light high-necked blouse or dress and a close double-strand necklace. Her hair is loosely waved and arranged around the face. The photographer has used very soft focus and a high-key tonal treatment, giving the portrait a deliberately delicate appearance.
The most important documentary feature is the original mount. At the lower edge, the studio name “Bobs” is embossed in script beside a small monogram device, followed by “16 Henry St. · Dublin”. The reverse is plain and carries no inscription identifying the sitter.
1916 & the Address
The original photographic premises did not survive the Rising intact.
The surviving streetscape at 16 Henry Street belongs to the rebuilding that followed the Rising. Buildings of Ireland dates the present commercial building to 1915–1920 and records that it was rebuilt in 1916–17. The portrait therefore preserves the commercial identity of an address at the moment immediately before a major rupture in Dublin’s urban history.
This does not make the sitter part of the Rising, and no such connection is claimed. The historical interest lies instead in the unusually precise survival of a photographic object carrying a studio name and address whose working life was cut short by the destruction of central Dublin in 1916.
The photograph and its embossed mount are the primary evidence. External sources used to establish the studio chronology and the history of 16 Henry Street are listed below.
- Photographers and Studios in Dublin — directory chronologyLists Bobs Studio at 16 Henry Street, Dublin, 1911–1916, and associates the “Bobs” trading name with the period from 1912.
- Little Museum of Dublin — Complimentary Coupon for Bobs Studio, IE LMOD 1224Institutional collection record for a surviving Bobs Studio coupon explicitly giving the address 16 Henry Street.
- National Archives of Ireland — Property Losses (Ireland) Committee, PLIC/1/0044Records photographers Henry George Brabazon and Percy Brewer and a claim for stock-in-trade and fittings damaged at 16 Henry Street during the 1916 Rising.
- Buildings of Ireland — 16 Henry Street, DublinArchitectural record for the present building, rebuilt in 1916–17 after the destruction in the city centre.
