Olympians All

So, who won the first Olympic medals for the Irish Free State, at the Paris Olympics of 1924? The answer is surprising – Jack Butler Yeats, the painter brother of the poet William, and Oliver St John Gogarty, the original of Joyce's Buck Mulligan. This was in a more civilised Olympic era when prizes were awarded for artistic as well as athletic endeavour – a feature of the Games that lasted until London 1948. 
  Yeats won a silver medal in the Painting category with the picture above, The Liffey Swim, depicting a traditional Dublin event. The chap in the fedora and the lady in the yellow hat behind him are probably the artist and his wife. The painting now hangs in the National Gallery of Ireland. As for Gogarty, he took a Literature bronze with his 'Ode to the Tailteann Games', a piece commissioned by the Irish government to mark the revival of said traditional games (a revival that proved short-lived).  
  In 1928 the painter William Nicholson was surprised to find himself the recipient of an Olympic gold medal, but I've written about that before – here...