Director of the National Gallery of Ireland (1927-1935) and first director of the Barber Institute (museum). Bodkin was the son of Matthias McDonnell Bodkin (1849-1933) and Arabella Norman (Bodkin) (d. 1931). His father was a journalist and later judge for County Clare, Ireland, and then Member of Parliament for North Roscommon. Bodkin attended Belvedere College and Clongowes Wood College before graduating from the Royal University of Ireland in 1908. He began practicing law in 1911.

Architectural historian and architect; coiner of the term "Norman" for English Romanesque architecture. Rickman hailed from a large Quaker family. His father, Joseph Rickman (1749-1810) a surgeon and apothecary, and mother Sarah Neave Rickman (1747-1809), ardent Quakers, disallowed a university education or an interest in the arts, which they considered frivolous. Instead, his father trained him also to be an apothecary and surgeon. By 1800 his studies were completed in London and briefly practiced in Lewes, Sussex.