Henri Dufour

François-Henri Dufour (19 Dec. 1870, Nancy, France — ?) was an architect and artist active in French Indochina as Inspector of Civil Buildings in Cambodia since 6 Oct. 1900, when he was directed to join the first ever EFEO archaeological mission (1901−2), conjointly with the Commission archéologique de l’Indochine and the Academie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres (1904), in order to study Angkor Thom, in particular the Bayon.

During this 1901 – 3 assignment, Dufour closely worked with Henri Parmentier, mission chief, and with photographer and artist Charles Carpeaux. He created the first comprehensive floorplans of the Bayon, only sketched six years earlier by Albert Tissandier in his Cambodge et Java: ruines khmeres et javanaises 1893 – 1894. Completed in 1903, the findings of this scientific campaign were published in 1913, with an archaeological record penned by Jean Commaille, who had become the first Angkor Conservator in 1908.

An amateur photographer himself, he had published a photoreport in the first issue of Bulletin de l’Ecole Francaise d’Extreme Orient (BEFEO) in 1901 — a format unseen at the time — on the ceremony of hair-cutting for one of King Norodom’s sons, Prince Chandaleka at the Royal Palace in May 1901, with captions showing an astonishing perceptiveness for Cambodian traditions.

Dufour ceremonies 1901 — For the last photograph concluding his series on Prince Chandaleka’s coming-to-age ceremony, Henri Dufour noted that the Palace’s women returning to the private quarters were led by the ‘prima ballerina’ of the King’s corps de ballet, **Nou-Nam**, “aged 17 and holding the *Mayurichatt*, a small parasol entirely coated with peackock feathers.” [*BEFEO* 1 – 2, 1901, p 243]

However, and despite the fact the exploration of the Bayon had been dubbed Mission Dufour, the architect-cum-ethnologist-archaeologist quickly disappeared from the Orientalist radars. In his reference Dictionnaire de Bio-Bibliographie published in 1935, Antoine Brebion allowed that Henri Dufour, “once his mission in Cambodia accomplished, returned to France in 1903 and died some time later in Nancy,” a version also stated in Pierre Singarevelou’s book on the history of EFEO (1999).

In her Dufour’s bio profile on Agorha, nevertheless, Marie-Laure Crosnier Leconte points out that he “was still professionnally active in 1932,” adding that he had graduated from Ecole des Beaux-Arts of Nancy and several of his artworks had been exhibited in Paris in 1896, 1899, 1900 (watercolors of Tunisian and Spanish landscapes and 1903 (Angkor-Vat, angle sud-ouest de la deuxième enceinte).

Publications

“Documents photographiques sur les fêtes ayant accompagné la coupe solennelle des cheveux du prince
Chandalekha, fils de Noroudām, en mai 1901, à Phnom-Penh,” BEFEO 1 – 2, 1901, pp. 231 – 243.
Ministere de l’lnstruction publique et des Beaux-Arts, Le Bayon d’Angkor Thom, bas-reliefs, Paris, E. Leroux, 1910.
Le Bayon d’Angkor Thom, bas-reliefs publiés par les soins de la Commission archéologique de l’Indochine d’après les documents recueillis par la mission Henri Dufour, avec la collaboration de Charles Carpeaux, Paris, Ministere de l’Instruction Publique et des Beaux-Arts/Ernest Leroux, 1913, 300 pl. [with archaeological record by Jean Commaille].

Photoportrait: source Agorha/INHA4