Entertaining visitors can be an unexpected way to rediscover your own hometown, writes Gemma Tipton
I wonder how many Dubliners forget how great Dublin can be. I definitely do. Cheesed off with traffic, cranes, house prices and litter, I tend to get into that foreign-city-envy frame of mind where anywhere seems more desirable than home. And I walk around wondering what on earth it is that the tourists crowding our streets are finding to look at.
I was wondering about this all the more forcefully recently when I had a pair of extremely important visitors (EIVs) here for the day. Over from New York, they said they were particularly interested in art and architecture, which was good, because for work purposes so am I. But I still couldn't think where to bring them.
There is Trinity College, of course. I love the Long Room (although I can take or leave the Book of Kells), and Trinity's Museum Building is my favourite in Dublin. We also went to Marsh's Library, which I get a kick out of. It's the oldest public library in Ireland, and it has cages that they used to lock you inside, so you couldn't steal the books. Its founder, Archbishop Marsh, was called Narcissus, which sounds an odd sort of a name until you realise his brothers were called Epaphroditus and Onesiphorus. I didn't know that. I looked it up on the internet so that I could impress the EIVs. I think they were impressed, although not necessarily with me.
After lunch they suggested we go to the National Gallery of Ireland. "What's it like?" they asked. "Interesting," I said. "It has a new wing that is worth looking at because it doesn't really work." And what about the art, they wanted to know. I racked my brains. "There's not that much," I mumbled. "A nice portrait of Hazel Lavery in the portrait collection. She was American, and, until the euro came, she was on all our money, too."
We went in through the Merrion Square entrance, where the EIVS were getting their Museum Cards out to show until I told them that, no, Ireland's public museums and galleries, except for special exhibitions, are all free. As I spoke I felt the conflicting sensations of smug pride that we don't charge for our culture and insecurity that maybe our culture isn't worth charging for, unlike, say, New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art and Museum of Modern Art ("suggested donation" and ticket price, respectively: $20).
Anyway, in we went, and, walking through the great hall on the way to the portrait collection, I told them that initially the collecting policy had been to get enough works to cover the walls. I wasn't setting out to disparage, but I also didn't want to raise expectations. Going upstairs, we headed for Hazel, who, they agreed, was very attractive. We paused, too, to look at James Joyce, Constance Markievicz and Noel Browne, but I sensed their interest was waning. "We could walk through to the new wing," I offered. "Maybe have a coffee?"
And then I lost them. Exclaiming over Murillo, Canaletto, Rembrandt, Rubens, Gentileschi, Goya and El Greco, they went from picture to picture, room to room, with the delight of discovery. They couldn't get over the variety and quality of the collection. We stopped to look at the beautiful little Fra Angelico and decided that tastes had definitely moved on since the Fragonard (Venus and Cupid) was painted. We paused to wonder at the malevolent aspect of Paolo Uccello's Baby Jesus, and the difference in expression between Faber's gentle 19-year-old Katherina Knoblauch and her older, alarmingly autocratic-looking husband.
I was trying to find a reason why I hadn't mentioned all these wonders when we came to the Vermeer. There are only 35 acknowledged Vermeers in the entire world, and one of these is in our national gallery. It wasn't always here, however. Initially, Vermeer's wife gave it to the local baker, in lieu of debts after the painter died. Later it became part of the Beit Collection, at Russborough House, and spent two trips "away" with the criminal gangs that seemed, for a while, to have made robbing Russborough a rite of passage for anyone undertaking a serious life of crime. The Beits donated the Vermeer to the National Gallery of Ireland in 1987.
In the end it didn't really matter that the Caravaggio was away on loan. We had "done" the gallery for the day; after all, there are only so many incredible paintings you can take in on one visit. Although some of the older parts of the building could do with a little care and attention (and I'm still not wild about the Millennium Wing or the 1996 atrium where the Felim Egans hang), the collection must be one of Dublin's best-kept secrets. Or is it? Is it just that, living in Dublin, I forget to rediscover it?
A week later I had another visitor; this time not an EIV but an old friend I hadn't seen for a long time. Where could we go to hang out in peace in the sunshine, she wondered. This time I didn't even stop to mutter "nowhere" and instead headed straight for Phoenix Park. At 1,760 acres it is the largest urban enclosed park in Europe. Gloriously expansive, part wild and part planted, it even has its own herd of wild deer. Did you know that? The tourists who flock here almost certainly do.