Voyage au Cambodge, l'architecture khmer

Louis Marie Joseph Delaporte (11 Jan. 1842, Loches, France- 3 May 1925, 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 Compiègne, a collection of original artefacts and plaster, clay or paper casts later transferred to Musee indochinois du Trocadéro, which he directed, 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. Later, the attribution of many photographs taken in the Khmer temples became subject to controversy.

1873 and 1881 Missions 

Passionate about ancient Khmer art yet also ambitious and still dreaming of succeeding where De Lagrée had failed, Delaporte led two exploration missions in 1873 (23 Jul.-13 Oct.) and 1881 (13 Oct. 1881- 18 Feb.1882), the second one with the moral support of France’s Société de Géographie. Between the first and second expeditions, political winds had changed in France, and it took him some hard work to convince to convince the respective ministries to back him again. Also, the results of the first adventure had been wrapped in controversy.

When he had sailed back to Phnom Penh from Angkor on 10 Oct. 1873 aboard Javeline corvette with sculptures and statues from Beng Maelea temple, Jean Moura, then French Protectore representative in Cambodia, was happy to help — some ancient Khmer lintels later embedded in the walls of Moura’s family house in Moissac (France) came in this way. Back in France with numerous pieces of Khmer sculpture and architecture - the exact number remains unknown, even if we know that 102 crates arrived in Paris in mid-January 1874, plus 114 in 1892‑, he maintained they had been lawfully sourced but the Louvre Museum refused to accept them. The 1878 Paris Exposition Universelle gave him a chance to attract public attention to the Khmer artefacts. 

Later on, Delaporte attempted to ​‘supervise’ Lucien Fournereau​’s mission to Angkor 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 considered more informative than Delaporte’s. And the notations by Dr Jules Harmand, who was the physician on the two expeditions, have also found more credit among the specialists. 

Ultimately, despite the saga of the Compiègne and Trocadéro collections (it was only in 1910 than George Coèdes did establish a scientific catalog, and many if not all of the original plaster casts were finally left to decay after they were transfered for storage to a damp basement northeast of Paris), Louis Delaporte, whose dream had been to ​“create an Indochinese Museum at the Louvre,” succeeded in building up the first dedicated collection of Khmer art in France, a feat which nurtured further research and set it apart in the ​“colonial” or ​“ethnographic” French tradition of museology. And even if the scientific establishment often challenged his proficiency, he personally put in place a substantial, multilingual library at the Trocadéro Museum. 

Publications

• “Le Cambodge et les régions inexplorées de l’Indochine centrale”, Bulletin de la Société de géographie (Paris), Feb. 1875.
• “Rapport fait au ministre de la Marine et des Colonies et au ministre de l’Instruction publique, des Cultes et des Beaux-Arts, sur la mission scientifique aux ruines des monuments khmers de l’ancien Cambodge”, Journal officiel, 1 – 2 April 1874.
• “Une Mission archéologique aux ruines khmers”, Revue des Deux Mondes, 15 Sept. 1877.
• “Un temple khmer voué au Nirvâna”, Mémoires de la Société académique indochinoise, 1878.
• “L’antique temple de Baïon chez les Khmers”, Revue de géographie, t. 3, Jul. 1878.
• Notice explicative : modèle de la porte nord-est d’Angkor Thôm exposé dans la salle des restaurations architecturales, Paris, C. Delagrave, 1880.
  [illustrations] Francis Garnier, Voyage d’exploration en Indo-Chine, Paris,1873.
• Voyage au Cambodge: L’architecture khmere, Paris, E. Leroux, 1880.
• Les monuments du Cambodge: études d’architecture khmère, Paris, E. Leroux, 1924. , Paris, 1924.

About Louis Delaporte

• René 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, Antoine Cabaton​’s wife, 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.
• De Loches à Angkor : Louis Delaporte, l’aventure d’une vie, a multimedia exhibition in Loches (North of France), Delaporte’s hometown, in partnership with Musée Guimet and Conseil départemental d’Indre-et-Loire, including real artworks from Angkor, casts, drawings and photographs, 22 May — 21 Sept. 2025. [in memoriam Jérôme Hayaux du Tilly (1946−2024), Louis Delaporte’s grand grandson.]