Closer to home I can think of the portrait of Australian cricketer Don Bradman to name just one. Many years ago I was given a largish painting of an Australian bull fighter which hung in the Timeout in Moruya "kitchen" of the respite facility for Australian Institute of Sport athletes and coaches.
But all in all, Sport and Art has "not been" on the menu of Australian dinner tables as meal time chit chat, it has not been part of main stream culture as has say, Sport itself, or art's Archibald Prize.
But there is someone who has made an attempt to link Sport and Art, and that is Australian philanthropist Basil Sellers AM with his bi-annual $100,000 Sport-Art Prize at the Ian Potter Museum of Art at Melbourne University.
Moreover Basil Sellers love for the Arts has extended to sculpture by sponsoring 10 Sport sculptures around the SCG and six around Adelaide Oval. The Australian Missionary News IPTV interviewed Basil Sellers: YouTube
Sport and Art have been bought together with these highly visible projects and Australia is much the richer for them.
In my own artistic endeavours under my art-stage historic family name "Tronson du Coudray" I've painted a number of Sport paintings, one was a triple jumper, another on hockey, another still on soccer and that of diving. Basil Sellers commissioned me to paint a trilogy on Sport Anguish - "Anguish, Confusion and Hope". This trilogy can be viewed at: bushorchestra.com
I've also painted cricket art, one was a ball being hit for six, another of keepers gloves catching the ball, another was a philosophical piece illustrating where the fielders run, and I did one with Allan Border leading his team on the first days play onto the pitch, a scene from behind the ramp. This painting can be viewed at: bushorchestra.com
Having said all this, Sport is not the favourite cousin of Art and although newspapers and on-line news gives pages and pages to Sport, somehow those who reflect society, the artists of this world, have "not pushed the nasty side of sport's barrow".
Since time immemorial artists have seen their role in society as speaking to their society at a deeper level and challenging the mores of the day. Yet for whatever reason, they have not engaged in the sporting arena as say, artists have on political policies, social issues, moral claims, the psychological.
The Psalmist was never one to hide away their talent for all areas of society and Psalm 45 verse 1 illustrates such a breadth of scope:
"My heart is inditing a good matter: O speak of the things I have made touching the king" my tongue is the pen of a ready writer."