Jack Butler Yeats Memorial Scholarship in Art

Scholarship Information

Dr. Johann Norstedt, retired Virginia Tech professor and Radford University investor created this scholarship in memory of Jack Yeats. Jack Butler Yeats, 1871-1957, was an Irish artist and an Olympic medalist. His father was the Irish portraitist, John Butler Yeats, and his brother was the Nobel Prize winning poet William Butler Yeats. He studied painting and drawing at the Westminster School of art. Yeats is Ireland’s first Olympic medalist: he holds the distinction of being Ireland’s first medalist at the Olympic Games. At the 1924 Summer Olympics in Paris, Yeats’ painting The Liffey Swim won a silver medal in the arts and culture segment of the Games. Some critics dismissed his art as irrelevant. An exhibition in 1971, however, restored his reputation as perhaps “the most important modern painter in the history of Irish art.” In an auction in 2001, his expressionistic painting “The Whistle and the Jacket, 1946” was sold at Christie’s, in London, for 1.4 million pounds.

Scholarship Criteria

• Eligible students must be pursuing a major in art, with a preference for a student pursuing a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Studio Art.
• The scholarship may be renewable annually through reapplication.
• Must be awarded to only one student unless award exceeds cost of tuition.
• If no eligible student is available, funds shall be saved until an eligible candidate is enrolled.
• In the event that Radford University ever ceases its art program, the Fund balance should go to a general academic scholarship in the English Department, to be called the Johann & Marilyn Norstedt Scholarship.