YEATS RENDERED THE FLUID ENERGY OF SPECTATORS CHEERING ON SWIMMERS AS THEY GLIDED PAST PACKED CITY STREETS IN A POWERFUL, EXPRESSIONIST IMAGE THAT WOULD GO ON TO WIN HIM AN OLYMPIC MEDAL
Yeats’s The Liffey Swim. Winning swimmers today receive a print of Yeats’s painting as a prize.
The early 20th century was a time of great upheaval around the world. As technology pushed out the boundaries of what was possible and the old ways of doing business faltered, new nations formed, global population exploded, and a world that in many ways looks a lot like our own began to take shape. It was a particular point in time – encompassing World War I, the vast social changes that followed it, and the run up to the Great Depression and World War II.