Ireland’s first Olympic medal
An artistic victory
Ireland won its first Olympic medal 100 years ago, at the Paris Games in 1924. We’re returning to Paris for this year’s Olympics, marking a centenary of sporting achievements since we were first allowed to compete.
Unusually, however, Ireland’s first Olympic medal win wasn’t in any athletic discipline – it was for art. For the first four decades of Olympic competition, medals were awarded for painting, sculpture, architecture, literature and music, alongside those for athletic pursuits.
It was Ireland’s Jack B. Yeats who took home the artistic medal in 1924, winning silver for his painting ‘The Liffey Swim’, depicting the competition that takes place in Dublin’s main river each year.
“I think it got the medal because it is such a vivid depiction of people swimming. There’s not just the sense of the activity, there’s the sense of civic life, and there’s also a sense of the coldness and the difficulty of swimming up that river,” says Dr Caroline Campbell, Director of the National Gallery of Ireland.
Watch our interview with Dr Campbell about Yeats’ medal-winning painting below for more about this remarkable artwork:
Interview with Dr Caroline Campbell, Director of the National Gallery of Ireland
The National Gallery hold the Jack B. Yeats archive, including ‘The Liffey Swim’.