• 1 International Olympic Academy, Report of the 26th Session of the International Olympic Academy, Ath (...)
• 2 Ibid., p. 184.
• 3 This is a selection of randomly chosen examples: John MacAloon, This Great Symbol. Pierre de Couber (...)
• 4 Richard Stanton, The forgotten Olympic Art Competitions. The story of the Olympic Art Competitions (...)

2In sports history research, this “artistic” element of Pierre de Coubertin’s Olympic Games is taken as a matter of fact. The first time that topics relevant to artistic competitions were mentioned in the academic discourse was during the International Olympic Academy (IOA) conference in 1986.1 In particular, the participants discussed the beginning of the Olympic Art Competitions and why they were stopped. One of the sessions addressed the Conférence des Arts, de Littérature et des Lettres in Paris in 1906, thereafter referred to as Consultative Conference; a second session was about the unknown participating artists.2 In parallel to this IOA initiative, the Olympic Art Competitions also made it into sports history publications and kept appearing during the following decades. The historians focusing on particular artistic competitions or questions concerning the quality of the submitted artworks and the end of the competitions.3 The most outstanding publication is the one by Richard Stanton, who provides an overview of the seven competitions, mentioning important facts about the organization and biographic information about single participants.4

• 5 Natalia Camps Y Wilant, “A Female Medallist at the 1928 Olympic Art Competitions: The Sculptress Re (...)
• 6 Dorothee Hansen, Martin Faas (eds.), Vom Freitzeitvergnügen zum modernen Sport, München, Hirmer, 20 (...)

3During the last 40 decades, the academic discourse was led without the involvement of art historians, and it was not before the 2010s that they started to draw attention to the Olympic Art Competitions and to the sporting works within some artists’ oeuvre. For example, an article unveiled the participation of the German sculptress Renée Sintenis in the artistic competitions in 1928.5 A second example is two exhibition catalogues about the German painter Max Liebermann, published in 2016, and the other about Sintenis, published in 2019.6 The findings published so far render a scattered, incoherent, and incomplete picture of the Olympic Art Competitions. It does not seem to surprise that the sports aficionado Pierre de Coubertin integrated art competitions into the Olympic Program. In addition, the organization of such artistic competitions requires a specific knowledge and expertise is overlooked. Consequently, this article traces the role model for the Olympic Art Competitions, elaborating on the contours of the inspirational art-related sources for Pierre de Coubertin. Was there a role model for the concept? How did he invent the concept for the artistic competitions? And why was he interested in art at all?

• 7 Jürgen Habermas, Theorie des kommunikative Handels. Handlungsrationalität und gesellschatfliche Rat (...)
• 8 Erwin Panofsky, Meaning in the Visual Arts, New York, Garden City, 1955.
• 9 The text uses the English term “Fine Art Salon” according to the art historians James Kearns and Al (...)
• 10 Etienne Wenger, Communities of Practice: learning, meaning and identity, Cambridge, Cambridge Unive (...)

4An excellent way to trace the sources that sparked and fostered Pierre de Coubertin’s interest in art is to look at the details of his family and the society’s context. This approach mirrors the Lebenswelt concept of the German sociologist Jürgen Habermas, postulating that a person is influenced by the “conditions of his private life”, “lifestyles”, and “social norms”.7 These ideas are taken up in the iconological analysis of the German art historian Erwin Panofsky, looking for “sources” in the “daily life” of an artist.8 The artist whose life has to be considered in relation to the sources was Pierre de Coubertin’s father, who participated successfully in the Fine Art Salon with his paintings.9 Concerning society, the article looks at the circles, better said, the private salons and their guests. It is important to stress that the article understands the “circles” as restricted groups. This is the concept of the “communities of practice/ interest” developed by Etienne Wenger in the 1990s.10 In contrast to the networks, in communities, their members do share purposes and ideas, give mutual support, and build strong, often life-long bonds. At the same time, the communities have close boundaries and allow their members in. The article identifies personalities and like-minded people the Baron met and who supported his Olympic vision and became companions along the way.

• 11 The author’s reference list does not claim completeness. Instead, it presents mainly English public (...)

5The analysis was conducted using a variety of different sources. The primary sources were, for example, Pierre de Coubertin’s writings concerning art-related content and the Olympic Art Competitions. The author accessed journal articles, artworks, and documents from the private archives of Pierre de Coubertin’s descendants and the official reports of the Organizing Committees. In terms of secondary sources, salon research publications, art history and Olympic history publications with art-related content were used to guarantee well-grounded archival evidence.11 The selection of sources indicates that the author looks from an art historical perspective on the Olympic Art Competitions, mainly focusing on the painting discipline. Consequently, it has to be stressed that the other disciplines are not considered. The presented findings are one contribution to the picture of the Olympic Art Competitions, and their purpose is to stress their importance as a forgotten part of Pierre de Coubertin’s Olympic legacy.

• 12 Pierre de Coubertin, “L’Olympiade romaine”, Le Figaro, 5th August 1904, p. 1. Norbert Müller, in Ol (...)
• 13 For detailed information, see: Douglas Brown, “Revisiting the discourses of art, beauty and sport f (...)

6When the first modern Olympic Games were held in Athens in 1896, Pierre de Coubertin’s passion to organize sports competitions became a reality. Unfortunately, Pierre de Coubertin could not embed the arts, his second passion, right from the beginning. The main hinderers during the first two Olympic competitions were time constraints and the dissent of the IOC members to agree to any changes. In an article published in Le Figaro in 1904, on 5 of August, Pierre de Coubertin communicated his intention: “The time has come to take a new step and restore the Olympiad to its original beauty. At the time of the splendor of Olympia […] letters and the arts harmoniously combined with sport ensuring the greatness of the Olympic Games. It must be the same in the future”.12 The next step was to organize the so-called Consultative Conference at the Comédie Française in Paris in May in 1906, where the inclusion of art competitions into the sports competitions program was agreed upon.13 However, his first attempt to organize the artistic competitions for the 1908 London Olympic Games failed, and it took him another four years to realize his vision. Meanwhile, he circulated descriptions of what these artistic competitions should look like, for example the article in the journal Olympic Review published in 1910:

• 15 The Olympic World Library lists the most important publications about the Olympic Art Competitions (...)
• 16 Georges Bruni, “Les Jeux Olympiques”, Le Gaulois, 27^th July 1924, p. 2.

7Finally, in Stockholm in 1912, the first Olympic Art Competitions came to life parallel to the sports competitions. During the first half of the twentieth century, six more competitions followed until 1948.15 For example, the 1924 artistic competitions of the VIII Olympic Games were held at the Grand Palais and the medals were awarded during the closing ceremony in the Colombes stadium on 27 July 1924.16

• 17 Richard Stanton, The forgotten…, op. cit., p. 86, 128 and 150.

8The responsibility for the organization lay in the hands of the accordant host cities and their National Olympic Committees (NOCs). The latter published the official reports describing all organisational tasks in their guidelines, in particular the application process for the artistic competitions. Each NOC of the participating countries was responsible for submitting the participating artworks. The NOC of the host country formed a National Art Committee, responsible for the local realization of the event. For example, assemble the juries for each discipline, organize the exhibition spaces, and, finally, evaluate the artworks and award the medals to the artists. Although this set of rules was meant to guarantee a certain similarity between the Olympic Art Competitions, the responsible NOCs used these general guidelines to their advantage, filling the free, gladly marking it “their” Olympic event. They added their ideas to the concept by creating sub-categories in the disciplines. For example, the 1924 artistic competitions had a section called painting and graphic arts; in 1928, the sculpture discipline was divided into statues, reliefs, and medallions. In 1932 the NOC added the town planning category to the architecture discipline.17

• 18 Ibid., p. 374-412.
• 19 See for example: Natalia Camps Y Wilant, “A Female Medallist…”, art. cit.

9At this point in time, we are still researching how the NOCs informed the artists and promoted these events, making it attractive for them to participate. However, the well-known names in the list of participants of the Olympic Art Competitions evidence that these events had been a known and accepted “competition format” among the artists. For the seven Olympic Art Competitions, 1,738 participants were identified, including female artists, as mentioned at the beginning. For example, the Irish painter Jack Yeats (1871-1957), the Danish sculptor Jean Gaugin (1881-1961), the French architect Jacques Lambert (1891-1948), the German sculptress Renée Sintenis (1881-1965) and the British paintress Dame Laura Knight (1877-1970), to name a few of them.18 Their biographies, upon which historians have only started to elaborate, unveil their successful careers.19

• 20 Richard Stanton, The forgotten…, op. cit., p. 58, 83, 125-126, 149, 176-1777, and 198-199.
• 21 Ibid., p. 84; Pierre de Coubertin, Les Grandes Époques de l’art francais. Du XVII^e siècle à nos j (...)
• 22 Natalia Camps Y Wilant, “A Female Medallist…”, art. cit.
• 23 Ibid.; Natalia Camps Y Wilant, George Hirthler, “The Feminist Controversy: Coubertin’s Opposition t (...)
• 24 G.B. (Georges Bruni?), “Dernière Heure. Les Jeux Olympiques, concours d’art”, 28^th July 1924, p. 8.
• 25 For more information see for example: Allen Guttmann, Women’s Sports: A history, Columbia, Columbia (...)

10The biographies of most of the jury members, who were art experts, artists, and IOC members, have also been overlooked by historians to this point in time. In the 1924 painting jury were international painters such as Tsuguharu Fujita (1886-1968), Maurice Denis (1870-1943) and Édouard Vuillard (1868-1940).20 Interestingly, Coubertin mentioned the latter two in the second volume of his book Les Grandes Époques de l’art francais.21 Further, the jury had a female member – the Polish paintress Olga Boznańska (1870-1940). The fact that among the participants and juries were women makes it necessary to have a closer look within the topic of the female agents within the context of the Olympic Art Competitions. An analysis of the official reports shows that neither were female artists mentioned, and consequently, even less excluded; all publications used the term “artists”.22 Consequently, the Olympic Art Competitions were unrestricted playing fields for the female artists who used them as their unrestricted playing fields. And this successfully, as the list of results unveils. Of the 157 female artists, 10 won a medal and five diplomas, the so-called honourable mentions.23 For the 1924 Olympic Art Competitions, the British writer Dorothy Margaret Stuart (1889-1963) won a silver medal in the literature competitions for her work Sword Songs.24 The admission of female participants in the Olympic Art Competitions was utterly different from the Olympic sports competitions. Over the decades, these had many restrictions for female athletes and opened the contests only gradually.25

• 26 Olympic Studies Centre, “Art Competitions at the Olympic Games”, Lausanne, The Olympic Studies Cent (...)
• 27 Jean-Yves Guillain, Art and Olympisme. Histoire du concours de peinture, Biarritz, Atlantica, 2004, (...)
• 28 Natalia Camps Y Wilant, “When art was an Olympic discipline: the Fine Art Salon as a possible model (...)

11During the second half of the twentieth century, the conditions for the Olympic Art Competitions changed. The reasons, therefore, were manifold, and detailed research is a desideratum in Olympic history at this point in time. In 1948, the artistic competitions took place for the last time within the Olympic context. For the 1952 Olympic Games in Helsinki, the art competitions were downgraded to an austere art exhibition based on an IOC decision taken during the Olympic Congress in Vienne in 1951. For the next Olympic Games in Melbourne in 1956, the NOC also organized an exhibition, and from then onwards the cultural programs were realized.26 When looking for the reasons that ended the Olympic Art Competitions, the published research findings mention a mixture of time constraints, insufficient expertise and wrong judgement about the quality of the submitted artworks.27 The sections above exemplified that participants submitting the artwork and the jury members evaluating the submissions had a high reputation within the art world in their time. Consequently, the quality and expertise argument is not valid any longer.28 Concerning time constraints and organizational hinderers, we can assume that the lack of a “fixed frame” and the “freedom” of the NOCs, as explained before, kept adding to an instability that finally strengthened the decision to end the Olympic Art Competitions.

• 29 Norbert Müller, Olympism…, op. cit., p. 606.
• 30 Norbert Müller, Christian Wacker, Coubertin and the arts, Lausanne, Comité international Pierre de (...)
• 31 Pierre de Coubertin, “Décoration, Pyrotechnie, Harmonies, Cortèges. Essai de ruskinianisme sporti (...)
• 32 Norbert Müller, Christian Wacker, op. cit., p. 33; Patrick Clastres, Mémoires de Jeunesse. Pierre d (...)

12Historians developed two argumentation lines when looking for art-related influences on Pierre de Coubertin. First, according to Norbert Müller, Coubertin was influenced by the aesthetic theory of the English art John Ruskin (1819-1900).29 A second argument, also established by Müller with his colleague Christian Wacker was the art influences in the Coubertin family.30 A closer look at these arguments, demonstrates that they fall short due to lacking evidence. The first one is because although Pierre de Coubertin mentioned Ruskin in serial essays published in the Olympic Review between April and October 1911, there is no information about artistic competitions; instead the texts describe “athletic Ruskinanism.”31 As for the second, published information about the family members is scarce. Pierre’s father, whose full name was Charles Louis Frédy de Coubertin (1822-1908), started to study with the French artist François-Édouard Picot (1786-1868) at the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture.32

• 33 The author was allowed to consult the private collections of Pierre de Coubertin’s great-grandnephe (...)
• 34 These are: Pompéi and Aqueduc in 1845, Découverte de Laocoon in 1846, Intérieur de Laberit in 1847, (...)
• 35 The author discovered this fact in an album by Charles de Coubertin on page 16 and refers to the pa (...)

13Nevertheless, the author discovered valuable information illuminating the father’s career in more detail. These are some documents in the private archives of the descendants of Coubertin’s sister, and project results published by the British art historians James Kearns and Alister Mills.33 Once the young Charles de Coubertin finished his artistic education, he tried participating in the most important art competition, the Fine Art Salon. And according to the sources, he had been successful when the jury admitted and exhibited seven of his paintings between 1845 and 1850.34 In 1856, Charles was awarded a diploma for a painting showing an Easter mess scene.35

• 36 Fae Brauer, Rivals and Conspirators, Newcastle upon Tyne, Cambridge Scholar Publishing, 2013, p. 13 (...)
• 37 Renate Prochno, op. cit., p. 171; Gérard-Georges Lemaire, op. cit., p. 131.
• 38 Fae Brauer, op. cit., p. xii-xxvi.
• 39 Andrée Sfeir-Semler, op. cit., p. 91, 113; James Kearns, Alister Mill (eds.), op. cit., p. 491.
• 40 Natalia Camps Y Wilant, “When art was an Olympic discipline…”, art. cit.
• 41 The painting in the museum has a randomly assigned title. For a detailed description, see: Natalia (...)
• 42 Pietro Amato, Charles Louis Frédy de Coubertin. Il corteo Pontificio di Pio IX 1859, Rome, Musei Va (...)

14The Fine Art Salon had a long tradition taking place for three centuries between 1677 and 1888; painters and sculptors had been eager to participate therein.36 A salon jury, composed of academics, licensed Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture members, administrative staff and artists, evaluated the submitted artworks by walking through the exhibition rooms.37 Traditionally this evaluation took place on a Friday and was a crowded experience that fascinated all the participants and also later generations. For example, Jules Grün (1868-1938) conveyed this situation impressively in his painting Un vendredi au Salon des Artistes Français a century later.38 As salon research evidences, many artists were rejected. Still, among those who made it into the exhibitions, the jury awarded prizes, medals, and honourable mentions, which are diplomas for the best works. The medals given by the French state were a “seal of quality”.39 Until 1881, the organizer was the French state. Afterwards the Société des Artistes Français took over. The fact that the French state bought the winning works to decorate official buildings, offices and churches shows how important the Fine Art Salon was for its participants. Consequently, this state patronage system helped the artists to build their reputations and careers. In parallel to this system, the foundation of art galleries and the creation of artists’ networks and art societies in the 1840s enabled the emergence of an art market, an additional possibility for artists to sell their works.40 The whereabouts of most of Charles’ paintings remain in the dark. The author found out that most of his works are kept in the private collections of the family descendants, in the Musée d’Orsay in Paris and the Olympic Museum in Lausanne.41 Also, the Vatican Museum in Rome has a painting commissioned by Pope Pius IX in 1859.42 In addition, now and then, a painting is offered at international art auctions.

• 43 A selection of Pierre de Coubertin’s sketches can be found in: Norbert Müller, Christian Wacker, op (...)
• 44 Pierre de Coubertin, Notes sur l´éducation publique, Paris, Hachette, 1901, p. 298, 301.
• 45 Pierre de Coubertin, Les Grandes Époques…, op. cit. The first volume was published in October, and (...)
• 46 Pierre de Coubertin, “Souvenirs d’Oxford et de Cambridge”, Le Correspondant, 25^th August 1887, p. 7 (...)

15These artistic influences of Pierre de Coubertin’s childhood environment manifested themselves in two ways in the following years. As many sketches prove, Pierre absorbed all his father’s “art world” influences and inherited his father’s talent.43 Further, he discussed art aspects in his publications. For him, art, next to sports, was an essential topic in children’s education. He made this clear in some sections of his book Notes sur l’éducation publique, published in 1901. According to him, “the educational system must try to make art understood by all […] [because the] education of the eyes, ears and the fingers is never wasted on anyone.”44 He based the statements on the observations made during his US journey when visiting a drawing class in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1891. In addition to the practical aspects of the application of art, he was also interested in art history, particularly in the artworks and their creators. In his two-volume book Les Grandes Époques de l’art francais, published in 1916, he explained the development of art in France up to the 16th century.45 Further research unveiled that he wrote his first art-related lines almost twenty years before. For the journal Le Correspondant, he described his visit to the Fitzwilliam Museum during a stay in Oxford in 1887, where he saw the work of the British painter William Turner (1775-1851), whom he admired.46

• 47 Renate Prochno, op. cit., p. 171; Gérard-Georges Lemaire, op. cit., p. 131.

16The traced biographical facts about the Coubertin family evidence that Pierre’s education in this artistic environment created the prerequisites for art to become a part of his life. Further, the high-quality art competition of the Fine Art Salons with the award system of medals and diplomas provided an ideal framework for the later Olympic Art Competitions. A comparison between the organizational elements of the Fine Art Salons and the Olympic Art Competitions shows similarities. For example, the juries had the same tasks in both concepts: choosing and exhibiting artworks, evaluating them, and awarding medals and diplomas. Furthermore, both competitions admitted female participants. In terms of the jury members, the comparison unveils differences. While the Fine Art Salons had art experts such as museums’ administration staff, artists and collectors in the juries, the Olympic Art Competitions included IOC members with less or no art expertise next to the art experts.47 Pierre de Coubertin’s familiarity with the Fine Art Salon and its similarities with the Olympic Art Competitions allow us to conclude that the traditional French art competition was a role model for his artistic competitions within the Olympic program.

• 48 Patrick Clastres, op. cit., p. 34. The term ‘art world’ is used based on the definition of Howard B (...)
• 49 The author was given exclusive access to the diary during a visit to the Centre d’histoire de Scien (...)
• 50 Natalia Camps Y Wilant, “Decoding Olympic History in a Painting by Charles de Coubertin”, The Inter (...)

17The noble families during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries had an active social life, visiting concerts and theatre evenings or attending private gatherings. This section looks at the social interaction of the Coubertins, in particular with whom father and son met. According to Pierre de Coubertin’s Mémoires de jeunesse his father received regular visits from actors of the “art world”, namely, the sculptress Félicie de Fauveau (1801-1886) and the painter Charles Landelle (1821-1908).48 Besides these two artists, no further information about other encounters was identified at this point in time. Charles’s diary confirms these encounters.49 Besides the visits and some hunts in which the family participated, the father lived a reclusive, family-centred life.50 We can assume that this was due to his old age; he was in his 70s.

• 51 Natalia Camps Y Wilant, “‘A closed world’: Pierre de Coubertin as a possible guest in the Proustian (...)
• 52 Anne Martin-Fugier, Les Salons de la III^e République. Art, littérature, politique, Paris, Perrin, 2 (...)
• 53 Patrick Clastres, op. cit., p. 34. For detailed information about Alfred Émilien O’Hara, comte de N (...)
• 54 Caroline Weber, Proust’s Duchess. How Three Celebrated Women Captured the Imagination of Fin-de-Sie (...)
• 55 Ibid., p. 175.

18This possibility to meet with like-minded persons, as Charles did, was an old tradition and was practised in the salons, where larger groups of persons came together. It goes back to the seventeenth century when the marquise Catherine de Vivonne de Rambouillet (1588-1665) invited her guests into the “salon bleu”.51 Although she set the rules for the event, Nicolas Chamfort (1741-1794) introduced the word “salon” a century later. These social gatherings served two purposes. First, to cultivate a “humanistic, aristocratic lifestyle”, and second, to “advance the careers” of its participants.52 Concerning the Coubertins’ involvement in these events, Pierre’s Mémoires provide information. The Comte Alfred Nieuwerkerke (1811-1892) was a regular guest of his father, and he also attended many salons in Paris.53 A look into his life unveils the different positions in which he worked. He was director of the state museums, minister of the arts and president of the jury of the Fine Art Salons; additionally, he was a sculptor and an art collector. In sum, he was an important personality in the Parisian art world. His importance accounts for another fact. In 1845, Princess Mathilde Bonaparte, cousin of the future emperor Napoléon III became his companion, and although both were married to other partners, this relationship lasted for 25 years. Princess Bonaparte is essential in the salon context because the noblewomen hosted the salons.54 Consequently, these hostesses shaped the focus of their salons, for example, on art, music, or politics, and they decided whom to invite to their gatherings. This exclusivity is described by Caroline Weber to the point: “When that circle was very small and selective, it was reputed to be a ‘closed’ salon: the gold-standard of mondain prestige”.55

• 56 Patrick Clastres, op. cit., p. 83-93.
• 57 Natalia Camps Y Wilant, “‘A closed world’…”, art. cit.
• 58 Ibid.
• 59 Caroline Weber, op. cit., p. 581-587.
• 60 William Sansom, Proust, London, Thames and Hudson, p. 104.
• 61 Natalia Camps Y Wilant, “‘A closed world’…”, art. cit.

19In contrast to his father, Pierre was actively involved in Parisian society as a young man during the 1880s, attending salons as he described in his Mémoires.56 A scrapbook in which he collected all the invitation cards to the social gatherings he attended between 1882 and 1885 backs up his narrations.57 Next to the cards, he decorated the pages with sketches and annotated twenty-eight names of noble-born women with whom he danced. Consequently, the Coubertins had connections to different families, and interestingly, some of these names played a role in the following years in Olympic history. One of those were the Greffulhes. Letters and invitation cards indicate that Coubertin had close contact with Élisabeth de Riquet de Caraman-Chiman (1860-1952), the Comtesse de Greffulhe.58 The Comtesse’s social position explains the importance of this friendship. Concerning the course of action of a salon, the guest and well-known writer Marcel Proust described them excellently: “The first guests are starting to arrive, and Mme Greffulhe places them along the walls in the great reception room of the hôtel, keeping the middle of the salon free and clear for the arrival and progress of His Majesty”.59 As her guest’s names allow us to assume, the Comtesse de Greffulhe was one of the best-known hostesses in Parisian society. Therefore, she is one of the personalities in Proust’s 12 volumes À la recherche du temps perdu, where he summarized his experiences.60 Among all the other hostesses, the Comtesse held the most exclusive salon. Consequently, every society member wanted to be part of it and access her “closed” network.61 As Proust summarized in an article written in 1893:

• 63 For more information about the musicians, see Jessica Duchen, Gabriel Fauré, London, Phaidon Press, (...)
• 64 Richard Stanton, The forgotten…, op. cit., p. 84.

20Although there is no proof of how often Pierre de Coubertin had been a guest in her salons, we can assume that he met others there who helped him. The Comtesse was also a patroness of the arts who founded the Société des Grandes Auditions in 1890 that organized concerts for national and foreign composers, among them Gabriel Urbain Fauré (1845-1924) and Paul Dukas (1865-1935).63 In the context of the Olympic Art Competitions, both men appear as jury members of the 1924 music competitions, while there is no evidence that the Comtesse attended Olympic Game competitions in her hometown.64

• 65 Natalia Camps Y Wilant, “‘Mon cher collaborateur’. Pierre de Coubertin, George Hohrod and the edito (...)

21When we take Proust’s quote literally, there was a second woman who was influential in advancing the realization of Coubertin’s undertakings. This was the editor of La Nouvelle Revue, Juliette Adam.65 According to the women of her social status, she was the hostess of a salon. Her guest focused on political and artistic topics. She was a friend of Léon Gambetta, who trusted her opinion, and consequently, and was called the “muse of the third republic”. She brought Coubertin in contact with the writer Jean Aicard (1848-1921), who performed at an earlier event – this was the founding congress of the IOC at the Sorbonne in 1894. Interestingly, among her other salon guests were Prince Georges Bibesco (1880-1941) and the Marquis Melchior de Polignac (1880-1950); they were also on the Comtesse de Greffulhe’s guest list. Moreover, what is more important is that both men were IOC members. Consequently, both women helped Pierre de Coubertin to get to know the right people.

• 67 Natalia Camps Y Wilant, “‘Mon cher collaborateur’…, art. cit.

23This section evidenced Pierre de Coubertin’s participation in the salons and identified some persons who played an important role for him and became part of an “Olympic community”. First of all, the hostesses Comtesse de Greffulhe and Juliette Adam who allowed Coubertin into her networks. Further, their guests with whom Coubertin built his network and cultivated the communities. Some of these relations developed into a long-lasting “old friendship”, as this was the case with Juliette Adam.67