THE COMMONS Restaurant is now an almost forgotten symbol of the economic boom. For a few years before and after the Millennium year 2000, it was one of Dublin’s most fashionable and expensive restaurants.
Launched with great fanfare in the golden 1990s by Sandycove publican Michael Fitzgerald, its owner and Joyce enthusiast, it was housed in the basement of Newman House on St Stephen’s Green. Proximity to the Department of Foreign Affairs at Iveagh House meant the restaurant was favoured by visiting dignitaries but it was also a destination venue for the corporate expense-account set who were introduced to the dubious pleasures of dishes such as sweetbreads with port and spinach and honey and thyme sorbet.
The walls were decorated with paintings by some of the country’s leading artists who had been specially commissioned to create works celebrating the heritage of James Joyce.
Reviewing the "fabulous" restaurant for The Irish Times, Sandy O'Byrne wrote that the lighting was "kinder to the paintings than the patrons". But, despite its great success, which included a brief spell with a Michelin star, The Commons closed without warning in April 2003.
Former patrons who still suffer pangs of nostalgia may wish to bid for one of the restaurant’s most memorable pictures which is to be auctioned next month.
De Veres has announced the sale of Robert Ballagh's L'Origine Du Langage. The large painting, measuring 48in by 66in, is estimated at €20,000-€30,000.
Robert Guthrie of de Veres said: “it depicts James Joyce and René Magritte seated at a window overlooking the corner of St Stephens Green at the top of Grafton Street in the year 1904. Magritte is presenting Joyce with an orb in recognition of his outstanding writing achievements which have made Dublin the literary centre of the world.”
Of course, no such meeting ever took place. Magritte, born in 1898, was a Belgian surrealist artist most famous for his 1929 word-image La Trahison des Images– a much-reproduced painting of a pipe with, underneath, the words: Ceci n'est pas une pipe.
Many of his paintings are now on display in a dedicated museum on the Place Royale in his native Brussels.
And what about the other paintings which adorned The Commons? Most were offered at auction in 2004. Among those which sold were Tony O'Malley's oil-on-board, Make The Music Sweet StringsBy The River Where the Willows Meetwhich fetched €38,000 and Louis le Brocquy's watercolour Image Of James Joyce, €36,000.
Ballagh’s painting, which was then estimated at €25,000-€35,000, was also offered in that auction but failed to sell. It now returns to the market with the new, lower estimate in de Vere’s auction on March 30th in the D4Berkeley Hotel.
