Analysis: We know Jack B Yeats' medal-winning painting is in the National Gallery, but where are the other Irish artworks which were Olympic hopefuls?
In its early years, the Olympic Games included categories for painting, sculpture, music, literature and architecture. Ireland enjoyed success in the arts categories, but little coverage of the medal winners, untraceable artworks and the eventual cancelling of the competitions means that we have lost a piece of our Olympic history.
We are hoping that the coming weeks will be filled with images of Irish athletes taking to the podium and waving proudly at the crowd as they receive their Olympic medals. Previous gold medal winners including Pat O'Callaghan, Ronnie Delaney and Katie Taylor have been etched into the annals of Team Ireland's Olympic history.
But Ireland’s first Olympic medal wasn’t for athletics or boxing. It was instead awarded for a painting by Jack B. Yeats. He won silver for his work The Liffey Swim and the first ever Olympic medal for Ireland as an independent nation.
From RTÉ Lyric FM's Lyric Feature Through the Canvas, Diarmuid McIntyre and Cristín Leach venture down Dublin's busy quay in the company of Jack B Yeat's 1923 painting The Liffey Swim
Baron Pierre de Coubertin, the founder of the International Olympic Committee and the modern Games, saw art competitions as integral to his vision of the Olympic Games. "Deprived of the aura of the Arts contests," he once declared, "Olympic Games are only World Championships" Starting from the Stockholm Olympic Games in 1912, architects, sculptors, poets and painters took part in competitions for their arts.
Unlike the sporting categories which were limited to amateur athletes, professionals were permitted to enter. One condition was that they were to be original works and were to be inspired by the concept of sport. In addition, the jury could only consider works not previously published, exhibited, or performed and would not be accepted if they had been exhibited prior to the Olympic Games. The format of the arts competitions was inconsistent and occasionally chaotic: a category might garner a silver medal, but no gold, or the jury might be so disappointed in the submissions that it awarded no medals at all.
Ireland’s entries were from many well-known creatives. Those who entered their artworks include Seán Keating, Oliver Sheppard, Mainie Jellett and John Lavery, before he did a Declan Rice and declared for Great Britain at the 1928 and 1932 Games.
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From Lyric FM's Culture File, untangling the lives and art of the "Irish" painter John Lavery
The Paris Games in 1924 were Ireland’s most successful year in the Olympics arts categories. Oliver St John Gogarty's poem Ode to the Tailteann Games won the bronze medal in the literature category. It was written at the request of the Irish Government to mark what has been described as the 'Gaelic Olympic Games’, which were first held in 1924 to celebrate Irish Independence.
In the mixed painting category, Jack B. Yeats entered his oil on canvas work The Liffey Swim. The artwork captures the atmosphere and thrill of an annual sporting event that still takes place in Dublin today. The painting was awarded a silver medal and has since been acquired by the National Gallery of Ireland.
While Yeats and Gogarty entered the Irish Olympic history books as the first medal winners since Irish independence, they were not given their moment of glory on the podium and presented with a medal the same as the athletes. Instead, they were both notified of Olympic success through a letter in the post. Their achievements were met with little celebration and a short one paragraph mention in one newspaper in 1924.
Yeats was beaten to the gold medal by Jean Jacoby from Luxembourg, who also took first place in the painting category in 1928. Olympic success brought Jacoby many opportunities afterwards as an illustrator in daily newspapers and later, as picture editor. Luxembourg honoured Jacoby’s success by issuing seven postal stamps depicting his work, while a stadium in Schifflange and a street in Luxembourg still carry his name.
The arts categories at the 1928 Olympic Games in Amsterdam enjoyed plenty of attention with hundreds of thousands of people visiting the exhibition of entries. In 1940 and 1944, the Olympics were put on hold as nearly all participating countries became embroiled in the violence and destruction of World War II.
The next iteration of the arts categories was at the 1948 Olympics held in London and exhibited at the Victoria and Albert Museum. Artist Letitia Hamilton won the bronze medal for The Meath Hunt Point-to-Point Races. While Hamilton enjoyed success in her artistic career with many solo shows and works exhibited across Europe and the UK, the whereabouts of the painting that won her an Olympic medal is unknown today. It is thought to be in private ownership in the United States, but it may never be traced.
Indeed, there are many artworks that won Olympic medals that have since been lost to the mists of time. The arts categories were no more than a footnote in Olympic history and were not well documented. Many of the recorded names of artists and artworks were wrong or incorrect, descriptions of the artworks were vague or absent and artists sometimes created multiple works with similar titles. With only a small number of the artworks ever photographed, they are close to impossible to track down.
Hamilton’s bronze would be Ireland’s last medal in the arts categories as the cultural aspects of the Olympic Games were no longer in competition format. After de Coubertin’s death, the new president of the International Olympic Committee led a campaign against the arts and they were cancelled by the time the 1952 Olympics were held in Helsinki. Instead, they were replaced by a non-competitive exhibition to occur during the Games, which eventually became known as the Cultural Olympia, which still runs today.
The main reason for the scrapping of the arts categories was not because of a lack of interest, but because most of the entrants were professionals which conflicted with the amateur ethos of the Olympic Games. In a report on the state of the Olympics, the IOC deemed that "since art competition contestants are practically all professionals, Olympic medals should not be awarded. This event should be in the nature of an exhibition".
Some of the artworks that represented Ireland at the Olympic Games are now in museums and galleries and some are in private collections, but most have been lost due to indifference
Furthermore, arts contests were subjective and without the jeopardy of the sports categories. They were also ill-suited for the dawning age of television. Although the inclusion of the arts competitions demonstrated the importance of culture within the Olympic movement in its early years, the 151 medals awarded in the arts categories were officially stricken from the Olympic record and do not count toward countries’ current medal counts.
Some of the artworks that represented Ireland at the Olympic Games are now in museums and galleries and some are in private collections, but most have been lost due to indifference. For the Irish entrants, their Olympic success and participation is usually viewed as a quirky fun fact that appears in their biographies. There has been some retrospective celebration of these artworks, but they could never disrupt or measure up to the heroic imagery of Olympic athletes that we are so familiar with. Like the fate of the arts categories themselves, the Olympic Games eventually became an overlooked sideshow for those artists who had invested in it.
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The views expressed here are those of the author and do not represent or reflect the views of RTÉ
