Louis Delaporte

Louis Marie Joseph Delaporte (11 Jan. 1842, Loches, France- 3 May1925, Paris) was a French Navy officer, a drawing artist, cartographer and explorer who developed an interest in Cambodia and Khmer art after joining Doudart de Lagree’s Mission in 1866 – 1867, before organizing his own two archaeological missions (1873 and 1881 – 2), launching in 1875 the Musee khmer de Compiegne, a collection of original artefacts and plaster, clay or paper casts later transferred to Musee indochinois du Trocadéro, which he drected, and donated to Musée Guimet after his death in 1925.

Arrived in Indochina in July 1865, he was appointed to the Mission d’exploration du Mekong and left Saigon on 6 june 1866 with the rest of the group led by Doudart de Lagrée as a draughtsman and ‘responsable de l’intendance’, a kind of quartermaster whom Francis Garnier dismissively called “chef de gamelle” [grub supervisor]. Even if his first drawings made in Angkor and Laos were deemed insufficient, he illustrated Garnier’s first relation of the Mission, published in 1873.

1873 Mission

Aboard Javeline corvette, he wabck to Phnom Penh, from Angkor on 10 Oct. 1873, with sculptures and statues from Beng Melea temple. Jean Moura, then Représentant du protectorat français,

Passionate about ancient Khmer art, he led two exploration missions in 1873 (23 Jul.-13 Oct.) and 1881 (13 Oct. 1881- 18 Feb.1882), and attempted to ‘supervise’ Lucien Fournereau’s mission in 1887 – 1888. The latter found Delaporte lacking of architectural, archaeological and writing skills, and obliquely criticized Delaporte’s Voyage au Cambodge: L’architecture khmere (1880) in his book Les ruines d’Angkor: étude artistique et historique sur les monuments khmers du Cambodge siamois. The drawings of Khmer sites executed by Fournereau, who had studied architecture, or Felix Faraut, are more informative than Delaporte’s.

Dessin attribue delaporte musee guimet — This drawing of Angkor Thom Royal Terraces is attributed to Louis Delaporte by the Guimet Museum (source: humazur)

Cambodge Course de pirogues cambodgiennes etching barbant from delaporte — Delaporte’s original sketches from 1866 – 1868 inspired later artists: etching by Barbant, 1886, from one of Delaporte’s sketches (source: gallica.bnf.fr)

Publications

[illustrations] Francis Garnier, Voyage d’exploration en Indo-Chine, Paris,1873.
Voyage au Cambodge: L’architecture khmere, Paris, 1880.
Les monuments du Cambodge, Paris, 1924.

About Louis Delaporte

Rene de Beauvais, La vie de Louis Delaporte, explorateur (1842−1925): les ruines d’Angkor, Paris, P. Lanore, 1931, 218p. [Julie Philippe (see below) has found out that R. de Beauvais was the pseudonym used by Madeleine Cabaton when Hélène Delaporte, Louis’s widow, asked her to pen his late husband’s biography.] [8 out of 12 chapters are devoted to the 1866 – 1868 Mission.]
Julie Philippe, ”C’est bien comme cela que l’on s’imagine un beau monument de l’Orient”: Louis Delaporte et l’art khmer(1866 – 1924), Thesis Ecole nationale des chartes, Paris, 2015, 655 p. (via Hal).
A Pictorial Journey on the Old Mekong, by Louis Delaporte & Francis Garnier, transl. by Walter E. Tips, vol 3, White Lotus Books, Bangkok, 1998, 266 p. (repub. larger format 2006), ISBN 9789744800794.

Related Books: Voyage au Cambodge, l'architecture khmer