Visions of Asia by...Léa Lafugie

A fearless woman traveler who went alone to Tibet in 1926, 1927 and 1931, Léa Lafugie was above all an artist with a rare talent for sketching landscapes, landmarks and people. While a comprehensive study of her impressive artistic production is still to be done, we have gathered here some of her works by cultural areas, roughly corresponding to modern States in Southeast Asia. From Indian maharajahs to opium smokers in China and Vietnam to hill tribe women in Laos, Burma or Vietnam, from dancers at Phnom Penh Royal Palace to women in Japan and Bali, we get here an intimate, empathic and almost ethnographic vision of the Asia of yore, obviously beloved yet not idealized.

Léa Lafugie’s precise rendition of women’s clothing and headdresses from ethnic minorities — often with notations about the material, the type of stitching, the dye hues of a garment, the jewelry and accessories -, for instance, has certainly something to do with her earlier career as fashion illustrator. It also reflects the desire to make her constant wanderings in between the two world conflicts a tribute to the people of those lands. She was not following a plan, adjusting her travels to her personal circumstances, only guided by an endless curiosity and creativity.

We know she lived in many of the places she pictured, especially in Siam and Malaysia, where her husband — she had married quite late, in 1931, at age 42 -, and spent continuous amounts of time in Phnom Penh, Shanghai, Saigon, Rangoon [Yangoon], Luang Prabang, Tokyo, or across Indonesia (1930), yet she was above all a ​“roving artist”, as reflected by the title of one of her numerous conferences on 15 Oct. 1932: ​“De la Birmanie au Mékong par la brousse siamoise par Mme Lafugie” [“From Burma to the Mekong through the srublands of Siamese”], as reported in the Parisian newspaper Excelsior on that day.

“Artist traveler” in the full sense of the term, Léa Lafugie revisited the notes, paintings and photographs from her very first major exploration, Tibet, almost two decades after completing it. According to Aurelise Bouquet’s guess in her essay ​“Early Explorations Journeys in High Asia: Léa Lafugie”, she ​“started writing her first book, Au Tibet, sometime towards the late 1940s […] and by the time she published her second book, she was already 73 years old and memories of places names would have likely faded.” In the meantime, the Japanese invasion forces had kept her and her husband prisoners of war in Malaysia, after which they moved to Ceylon [Sri Lanka] before returning to France. 

Sandrine Dapsens, who has studied Lea Lafugie’s unpublished, manuscript Journal de voyage 1928 – 1930, drew her itinerary right after her first travel to Tibet: , :

À compter de 1928, Léa Lafugie explore la Birmanie par les sentiers de montagne, le Cambodge, le Laos, le Tonkin, l’Annam et la Cochinchine. Elle peint le portrait du roi du Cambodge Sisowath Monivong, représente les danseuses du ballet royal et dessine les temples d’Angkor. Elle traverse les forêts vierges du Nord du Siam jusqu’à Bangkok. Ses paysages et ses portraits sont exposés la même année à Bangkok, puis à Calcutta. Au Laos, elle rejoint Luang Prabang en naviguant sur les tumultueux courants du Mékong sur un radeau de bambou. Le 8 août 1928, elle y fait la connaissance d’Alix Aymé (alors Alix Fautereau), venue faire des études pour la décoration du palais du Roi. Quelques jours plus tard, Léa Lafugie réalise le portrait du roi du Laos à Paklay. À Hué, le 3 septembre 1928, elle retrouve son ancienne camarade des Arts décoratifs, Marie-Antoinette Boullard-Devé, mariée au résident-maire de Hué. Grâce à ses relations, Léa Lafugie peint le régent de l’Empire et la reine mère de l’empereur Khaï-Dinh, tous deux dans des costumes de brocart coloré richement brodés. Ses « aventures » sont largement diffusées. 

À la suite d’une interview donnée à Alfred Meynard (1881−1951) à Hanoï, sont publiés ses récits de voyage au Tibet, en Inde et autres régions d’Asie du Sud-Est. De retour en France, elle organise, à la galerie Pleyel, une importante exposition en juin 1930 de 187 toiles et aquarelles sous l’intitulé « Cinq ans d’expéditions en Asie », inaugurée par le sous-secrétaire d’État aux Beaux-Arts. Elle complète la manifestation par quatre conférences portant sur ses expéditions. L’État français lui achète à cette occasion une huile sur toile Le Bouddha vivant du Thibet (Tournus, hôtel-Dieu-musée Greuze). À l’automne de cette même année, elle part pour l’Indonésie, expédition dans l’intérieur de Bornéo où elle peint les Dayaks, derniers « coupeurs de têtes ». Elle parcourt les îles de la Sonde et retourne en Inde pour y préparer une traversée à cheval à travers la Perse. Elle en rapporte des portraits uniques. Paris la retrouve fin 1932 pour une exposition à la galerie Charpentier où figurent cinquante-neuf aquarelles complétées par une dizaine de portraits de leaders syriens et arabes. La Ville de Paris lui achète alors Joueuse de Koto et Japonaise de Kyoto, deux oeuvres sur papier aujourd’hui disparues. [Sandrine Dapsens, ​‘Léa Lafugie: Du Tibet à l’Indochine’, in Arielle Pélenc (dir.), Artistes-voyageuses 1880 – 1944: L’appel des lointains, Evian, 2023, p 232 – 44.]

From 1928, Léa Lafugie explored Burma via mountain trails, Cambodia, Laos, Tonkin, Annam and Cochinchina. She painted the portrait of the King of Cambodia Sisowath Monivong, depicted the dancers of the royal ballet and drew the temples of Angkor. She crossed the virgin forests of Northern Siam to Bangkok. Her landscapes and portraits were exhibited the same year in Bangkok, then in Calcutta. In Laos, she reached Luang Prabang by navigating the tumultuous currents of the Mekong on a bamboo raft. On August 8, 1928, she met Alix Aymé (then Alix Fautereau), who had come to study for the decoration of the King’s palace. A few days later, Léa Lafugie painted the portrait of the King of Laos in Paklay. In Hue, on September 3, 1928, she met up with her old classmate from the Decorative Arts School, Marie-Antoinette Boullard-Devé, married to the resident-mayor of Hue. Through her connections, Léa Lafugie painted the Regent of the Empire and the Queen Mother of Emperor Khaï-Dinh, both in richly embroidered, colorful brocade costumes. Her ​“adventures” were widely disseminated.

Following an interview with Alfred Meynard (1881−1951) in Hanoi, her travel accounts of Tibet, India, and other regions of Southeast Asia were published. Back in France, she organized a major exhibition of 187 paintings and watercolors at the Galerie Pleyel in June 1930 [see below], entitled ​“Five Years of Expeditions in Asia,” inaugurated by the Undersecretary of State for Fine Arts. She completed the exhibition with four lectures on her expeditions. On this occasion, the French government purchased an oil on canvas, The Living Buddha of Tibet (Tournus, Hôtel-Dieu-Musée Greuze). In the autumn of that same year, she left for Indonesia, an expedition to the interior of Borneo, where she painted the Dayaks, the last ​“headhunters.” She traveled through the Sunda Islands and returned to India to prepare for a horseback crossing through Persia. She brought back unique portraits. Paris rediscovered her in late 1932 for an exhibition at the Galerie Charpentier, which featured fifty-nine watercolors, supplemented by a dozen portraits of Syrian and Arab leaders. The Paris Townhall then purchased her Koto Player and Japanese Woman from Kyoto, two works on paper that have since disappeared. [Sandrine Dapsens, ​‘Léa Lafugie: Du Tibet à l’Indochine’, in Arielle Pélenc (dir.), Artistes-voyageuses 1880 – 1944: L’appel des lointains, Evian, 2023, p 232 – 44.]

Note: in an attempt to recount both spatially and chronologically a rich and complex artistic production, we have organized these 102 works by Léa Lafugie (reproductions or photographies of paintings) in the following series: LL‑C (Cambodia), LL‑L (Laos), LL‑B (Burma [modern Myanmar]), LL‑V (modern Vietnam), LL‑S (Siam [Thailand]), LL-CH (China), LL-OP (opium theme), LL-IA (modern Indonesia), LL-IN (India), LL-LD, LL‑N, LL‑T (Ladakh, Nepal, Tibet), LL-SR (Ceylon [Sri Lanka]), LL‑J (Japan). Closing the gallery, 1) a sample of elephant-themed illustrations by the artist ; 2) a sample of her work as a fashion illustrator, 1920s; 3) an undated portrait of the artist at work. 

Dancers, Kings, Tribe Women, an Empress and a Maharani

Portraits of Cambodian Royal Ballet dancers Ith (written អិត in Khmer by the artist) and Run (រុន) open this gallery and the Cambodian series of Léa Lafugie’s works we were able to find in reproduction (LL‑C), along with the portrait of King Sisowath Monivong ស៊ីសុវត្ថិ មុនីវង្ស (27 December 1875 – 24 April 1941. r. 1927 – 1941). Lafugie had come to Phnom Penh to attend the ceremonies for the coronation of King Monivong in July 1928, and since she was used to ask royalties and dignitaries to autograph her work — often in their own language’s script — it seems the Cambodian sovereign complied to sign in his own hand, the same way King Sisavangvong of the Kingdom of Luang Prabang, who was a royal guest at the Phnom Penh coronation, would do it for her three months later in Laos (LL-L-13). King Sisavangvong (14 July 1885 – 29 October 1959, r. 1905 – 1945, and as sovereign of the Kingdom of Laos 1946 – 1959), was the last ruler of the Lao Kingdom of Luang Prabang and the founding king of the Kingdom of Laos.

Art vs Academism: 1) Portrait of HM King Sisowath Monivong by Léa Lafugie, 1928. 2) A portrait of the King c. 1933 by Charles Mascré-Souville, a French official portraitist who painted the Gotha of French colonialism at the time, from Admiral de La Grandière to Paul Bert, Albert Sarraut and Charles Le Myre de Vilers.

Art vs Academism: 1) Portrait of HM King Sisowath Monivong by Léa Lafugie, 1928. 2) A portrait of the King c. 1933 by Charles Mascré-Souville, a French official portraitist who painted the Gotha of French colonialism at the time, from Admiral de La Grandière to Paul Bert, Albert Sarraut and Charles Le Myre de Vilers.

Ith, already a noted artist during the reign of King Sisowath and had been remarked by the French media at the 1922 Colonial Exhibition in 1922, was then the first dancer and consistently appeared in George Groslier’s documenting work on the Royal Ballet in 1927. Ith’s portrait by Lafugie, along with King Monivong’s, were reproduced in Alfred Meynard’s printed report on King Monivong’s coronation ceremonies, where the prolix journalist composed an ode to the unnamed Ith and to the dancers’ feet:

Le soir, la grande Salle d’honneur au Palais s’ouvre aux invités européens et cambodgiens, pour le spectacle des Danses Royales. Le Roi a voulu inaugurer, pour son couronnement, un nouveau corps de ballet, pour lequel les costumes traditionnels ont etc confectionnés dans les matières les plus belles. Seules demeurent, des danseuses du précédent règne, les deux premières ballerines, souveraines de grâce et de science. Leurs jambes souples et lentes tracent sur le sol un poème aux étroites mesures; elles dansent, et les figures de pierre qui veillent aux temples d’Angkor sont ici venues s’animer. L’expression de leur danse n est pas dans le corps qui, massif, en compose le paysage immobile et coloré; elle n’est pas dans le visage qui en est le hautain spectateur. Mais les bras en sculptent le dessin et comparses infatigables, les pieds, que nul né regarde, ont le rôle le plus éloquent. Leur grâce changeante déroule l’action. Comme des méduses adhérant à l’eau qui les balance, ils se collent au marbre froid pour en refleurir en pétales vivants. Que les yeux se fixent sur eux seuls et leur jeu multiple et savant exprimera la valeur de la danse tout entière, la plénitude des membres et les courbes de leurs mouvements. A les voir agir comme deux êtres indépendants de la vie dont ils sont l’appui, délier les doigts, cambrer la plante en arc délicat ou ramper comme des serpents jumeaux et toujours mettre dans leur allure la somme de la cadence, ces membres frêles qui n ont de gloire que dans la nudité, décèlent leur secrète, leur intelligente perfection Toute la danse se concentre en eux, comme le ballet se résume dans l’onduleuse et juvénile majesté de la première danseuse. [Alfred Meynard, ​‘Le couronnement de S. M. Monivong, Roi du Cambodge, à Phnom-Penh, 20 – 25 Juillet 1928’, Revue Indochinoise [Extrême Asie] 27, 1 Sept. 1928: 127 – 8.]

[In the evening, the great Hall of Honor at the Palace opens to European and Cambodian guests for the Royal Dances. The King wanted to inaugurate, for his coronation, a new corps de ballet for which the traditional costumes were made from the finest materials. Of the dancers of the previous reign, only the two first ballerinas remain, sovereigns of grace and science. Their supple and slow legs trace a poem of narrow measures on the ground; they dance, and the stone figures that watch over the temples of Angkor have come to life here. The expression of their dance is not in the body which, massive, composes the motionless and colorful landscape; it is not in the face which is the haughty spectator. But the arms sculpt the design and, as tireless companions, the feet, which no one looks at, have the most eloquent role. Their changing grace unfolds the action. Like jellyfish clinging to the water that rocks them, they stick to the cold marble to bloom again into living petals. Let the eyes focus on them alone and their multiple and learned play will express the value of the entire dance, the fullness of the limbs and the curves of their movements. To see them act like two beings independent of the life they support, untying their fingers, arching their soles in a delicate arc or crawling like twin serpents and always putting into their gait the sum of the cadence, these frail limbs which have glory only in nudity, reveal their secret, their intelligent perfection. The whole dance is concentrated in them, as the ballet is summed up in the undulating and youthful majesty of the first dancer.] 

“Run”, probably for Arun, might have been Saruong, another royal dancer remarked by Groslier. L.L. went to Angkor to witness the ceremonial dances for the new King in the ancient Khmer temples — for instance LL-C‑3, watercolor on paper dated ​‘Angkor’ -, also painting at least 2 views of Angkor Wat and 2 of the Bayon, which we’ve been unable to find so far, and drawing Khmer villagers, men and women, in Siem Reap. 

“The King seats on his palanquin to tour the city” [photo ​‘Protectorate of Cambodia’ in Revue indochinoise, Sept. 1928, op. cit.]

In September 1928, back from Laos in a daring river journey, the artist was introduced to the Imperial Court of Hue, Đại Nam (the name of Vietnam before 1945) and six years later, on 24 March 1934, the exact day of her wedding and coronation, she painted a magnificent portrait of the last empress consort (hoàng hậu) of the Nguyễn dynasty, Nam Phương, née Jeanne Marie-Thérèse Nguyen Huu Thi Lan (4 Nov.1913 or 14 Nov. 1914, Gò Công, Cochinchina — 16 Sept. 1963, Chabrignac, France), the wife of Emperor Bảo Đại (r. 1926 – 1945) [portrait LL-V-14 dated on that day, ink and watercolor]. 

Nam Phuong’s father, Pierre Nguyễn-hữu-Hào, came from a poor ethnic Vietnamese Catholic family in Kiến Hòa district, Định Tường province, near Mỹ Tho, a Mekong Delta city rich with Cham and Khmer traditions. On recommendation from the Bishop of Saigon, he became secretary to one of the Cochinchinese richest men, Lê Phát Đạt, Duke of Long-My, married the latter’s daughter Marie Lê Thị Bìn, thus entering the rarified world of Vietnamese aristocracy. Nam Phuong, who had befriended George Groslier’s daughter Suzanne shortly before becoming the Empress, visited Cambodia several times and her sister Marie-Agnès Nguyễn-hữu-Hào (1903−1998), after marrying French Earl Pierre Jules François Georges Didelot (1898 — 1986), gathered an important collection of Cham and Khmer artifacts which she later donated to Paris Guimet Museum.

1) Empress Nam Phuong during her wedding day in Hue, photographer unknow, 1934. 2) Her portrait by Léa Lafugie.

1) Empress Nam Phuong during her wedding day in Hue, photographer unknow, 1934. 2) Her portrait by Léa Lafugie.

Léa Lafugie’s knack for spotting historically relevant luminaries at the right time and place is also obvious in her portraying of the Maharani of Cooch Behar (or Koch Bihar), a princely state that was incorporated to West Bengal after India’s accession to independence. In 1913, Rajmata Indira Devi (LL-IN‑7) , the daughter of the the Maharaja of Baroda (whom LL had also portrayed), had married Jitendra Narayan (1886−1922), the 23^d Maharaja of Cooch Behar, and after the latter’s death she presided over the Regency Council until the accession to the throne of the last King of Cooch Behar (1936), Jagaddipendra Narayan.

This flair for historical moments had her attend the national funerals of Chinese nationalist leader Sun Yat-sen 孫中山 (12 Nov. 1866 – 12 March 1925) on 29 May‑3 June 1929 in Nankin (modern Nanjing, Jiangsu). In her dispatch to L’Illustration (num. 4504, 29 June 1929: 798 – 9) she aptly the official ceremonies at the recently completed mausoleum on the Purple Mountain Purple Mountain for Sun Yat-sen , the founder of the Republic of China who remains the only political leader revered both in Taiwan (as The Father of the Nation) and in the Popular Republic of China (as The Forerunner of the Revolution), before adding a typical Lafugie touch. She recalled taking later a leisure boat ride on a lake nearby and capturing a mental snapshot of Modern China in its contrasting reality: ​“My flat-bottom boat passes along other boats. In one, a fat Chinese man in silk surrounded by his concubines in their high-collared dresses; in an other one, two couples of students, the girls with their bob cuts, their skirts hiked above the knees, the boys with white flared trousers and straw hats.” 

Far from traveling through Asia as some snobbish jet-setter, Léa Lafugie consistently directed her artistic attention to indigenous women. As a fashion illustrator in her earlier years, she was naturally enthralled by elaborate headdresses and garments since her first trip to the Himalayas. She also sensed women’s attire profundly reflected poorly documented minority cultures in the ethnic mosaic of Southeast Asia, and made a point in correctly naming the ethnic groups her artistic subjects were belonging to, writing down toponyms in the local languages whenever possible. 

Avant-la-lettre Ethnologist

Léa Lafugie traveled across South China and mainland and maritime Southeast Asia at a time ethnography (or ethnology) as a scientific discipline was still in infancy. Bronisław Malinowski had published Argonauts of the Western Pacific in 1922, Margared Mead her Coming of Age in Samoa in 1928, and E. E. Evans-Pritchard would issue The Nuer in 1940. Nevertheless, her indications on drawings and paintings remain precious pieces of information on the minority mosaic spreading from Burma (Myanmar) to Cambodian and Vietnamese highlands, onto the Malay and Indonesian archipelagos. 

Fascinated with the highlands, she led several non-scientific expeditions involving celebrities of that time, as shown in this short announcement in a French newspaper: ​“La comtesse de Jumilhac, dont nous avons annoncé le départ, doit rejoindre l’expédition Lafugie-Descamps, qui fait un voyage d’exploration dans les montagnes du Siam et de la Birmanie.” [“The Countess of Jumilhac, whose departure we have announced, is to join the Lafugie-Descamps expedition, currently on an exploration journey in the mountains of Siam and Burma.”] (Excelsior, 30 Oct 1934). Constance Crowninshield Coolidge, Countess of Jumilhac (4 Jan. 1892 – 30 April 1973), was a Boston Brahmin socialite, heiress and a long-term American expatriate in France who rejected the elite mentality as she proclaimed herself a socialist. Married three times, she had many extramarital and passionate affairs, notably with famous writer H. G. Wells. She invited to Paris her friend Wallis Simpson, whose love affair with Edward VIII led to the latter’s abdication in 1936. Another passion of hers was horse racing, and she owned a large stable of racehorses. 

But there was nothing frivolous or superficial in her artistic work. Here is some bacgkround on the ethnicities and the locations she mentioned, from north to south:

• Kachin State [bm ကချင်ပြည်နယ်], the northernmost state of Myanmar bordering China to the north and east (Tibet and Yunnan), Shan State to the south, Sagaing Region and India (Arunachal Pradesh) to the west.
• The Kachin peoples bm ကချင်လူမျိုး refer to several ethnolinguistic groups inhabiting the Kachin Hills and the Yunnan Province in China, as well as the northeastern Indian states of Arunachal Pradesh and Assam, some 1,5 million people pertaining to the Jingpo (whose language, Jingpho, serves as regional lingua franca), the Zaiwa, the Lashi/​Lachik, the Lawngwaw/​Maru, the Rawang and the Lisu.
• Namhkam [bm နမ့်ခမ်းမြို့] Nam Kham is the principal town in northern Shan State, Myanmar, on the southern bank of the Shweli River near the Chinese border.
• Karen or Kayin [bm ကရင် mon ကရေၚ် shan ယၢင်း] is a modern generic term for some 20 ethnolinguistic groups, mosty known in pre-colonial Burma as Talaing Kayin [တလိုင်းကရင်] in the lowlands and Bamar Kayin [ဗမာကရင်, ကရေၚ်ဗမာ], the highlander S’gaw Karens assimilated by the Bamar people and nowadays present in Thailand and Laos. LL’s reference to a Karen village named ​‘Daw Klaku Loumoy’ and a woman there were apparently written in a transcription of S’gwa Karen language.
• The Kamein [bm ကမန်လူမျိုး] or Kaman [ကမန်], are the ethnic group indigenous to Rakhine State, Myanmar. Kaman is originally a Persian word meaning ​“bow”, and the Kaman, now predominantly Muslim, were considered in ancient Burmese history as masters in archery.
• According to the article ​“Ethnic Diversity in Laos”, ​“Akha is a name given to a group of many different sub-groups and clans, known in the past as the Ko or Iko, but this name is now considered unproper. The Akha migrated from China into Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam within the past 200 years, and still inhabit only the far north of Laos, primarily Phongsaly and Luang Namtha provinces. Akha villages can be easily recognized by their village gates and large village swings. Akha women are famous for their silver headdresses of different shapes and designs, depending on the Akha group. The Akha Djepia wear a cone-shaped headdress, while the Akha Pouly headdress is more rounded, with a flat disc at the back. The Akha also wear indigo-dyed cotton clothing, decorated with embroidery, appliqué-work and beads’.
• The Phunoi [th ผู้น้อย lao ຜູ້ນ້ອຍ also called Cốông, Cống, or formerly Khong in Vietnam], tribal people of modern Laos, Northern Thailand, and Vietnam, related to the Mpi people and the Bisu people.
• ‘Meo’ was a French colonial term [derived from Chinese ​‘Miao’ 苗族, an official name not reflecting the ethnicity) for the Hmong or Mong, ​“people of the mountains” in Southern China, Laos, Thailand, and Vietnam. In modern Thai, they are called Móng (ม้ง) or Mieow (เมียว).
• Khlong [th คลอง] refers to ​“canal” or ​“watercourse” in Thailand. Khlongs are an essential part of Thailand’s transportation and drainage system.

Léa Lafugie acquired an in-depth knowledge of Sơn-la Province, recorded as the place with the highest number of ethnic groups in Vietnam. Mộc Châu, 200 km from Hanoi at 1,050 m above sea level, was her base for exploring the highlands. 

• The Thiên Mụ Temple [vn Chùa Thiên Mụ ​“Temple of the Celestial Lady”], where Lafugie painted her Portrait de Nguyen Dinh Giai à la pagode de Thien Mo (Portrait of Nguyen Dinh Giai at the Thien Mo Pagoda) [LL-V-13] in 1928, is a historic temple built by the first emperor of the Nguyễn dynasty on the site of a pre-existing, on the northern bank of the Perfume River in Huế, Vietnam.
• Phan Thiết is the capital of Bình Thuận Province on the southeast coast in Vietnam.
• Soula refers in French to the Sula Islands, North Maluku, Islands. These islands form since 2003 the Sula Islands Regency Kabupaten Kepulauan Sula.

From Tibet to Japan: Lafugies’ Buddhist Path and some detours

Léa Lafugie’s journey had started in 1926 with her first solitary expedition to the Himalayas. She then discovered Buddhism in its Tibetan form, at a time Lhassa was a forbidden city for outsiders. Her 1926, 1927 and 1931 travels have been documented elsewhere (see the references in her bioprofile on this platform), and the present gallery includes only a small part of her artistic production related to Tibet, Laddakh, Sikkim and Nepal [LL-TIB, LL-LD, LL-NEP].

In Tibet arose her interest in Buddhist monastic life, an aspect of Asian culture she would look into again in Japan, being accepted to a retreat at Mount Koya [jp 高野山 Kōyasan], the spiritual center of Shingon Buddhism, an important Buddhist sect which was introduced to Japan in 805 by Kobo Daishi. Yet more than a spiritual quest what seems to have fascinated the artist was the way religious practices might protect social and personal life from the standardization of mercantile modernity. In China, her numerous street views and daily life scenes were aimed at showing the ​‘Old China’, not in its feudalistic and despotic aspects but the spiritual realm in which people interacted, ate, played. Painting an elaborate gateway in a snowed field with the Beijing walls in the far background [LL-CH-12], she carefully noted in 1931 on her composition it was a ​“Pei Lou” gate, alluding to the Pailou or Paifang [ch 牌坊], gateway to an enclosure corresponding to an Ancient China administrative subdivision. 

A 1926 chance encounter with a British couple, Noël and Eve Orme, on a hunting trip in Ladakh, may reflect Léa Lafugie’s character and worldview. It happened near Pangong Lake and the village of Tangtse [or Drangtse tb བྲང་རྩེ], a mountainous, quite desertic area who neverthelesss had been an important halting place on the trade route between Turkestan and Tibet, where repeated wars took place between Ladakh and Tibet and a major rock art site was documented by a French-Indian archaeological mission in 2016. As Eve Orme told it many years later, she saw at their hunting camp 

a caravan [coming] with a tall man leading the way and behind him came a dark swarthy skinned woman. They were not in the country to hunt. The man was Ganpat, the ​“novelist”, and the woman with him was Mlle La Fougie, a French artist to whom he had acted as courier across the Chang La. I was struck at once by the force of her charming personality. She had started from Srinagar alone in search of material for paintings of Ladakh. She had, I gathered, found some difficulty in obtaining a permit, for these are seldom granted by the Kashmir Government to lone women travellers. But I could imagine that if Mlle La Fougie were determined upon a course, it would take more than a British resident, apprehensive perhaps as to her safety, to stop her pursuing it. She was travelling very light and looked physically as hard as nails. She was not going farther than Tankse, where she wanted to sketch the interior of some Ladakhi houses. When Noël arrived she was entranced by his bearded appearance and exclaimed, ​“Mais c’est Jean le Baptiste!” That night we opened one precious can of fruit, Rahim cooked the attenuated hen, and we had a party. The French woman showed me sketches she had already made of Ladakhi interiors. […] The sketches led to a discussion between Mlle La Fougie and myself on the evergreen subject of our sex. She was no feminist as the word is understood in England. — ​“You English,” she said, ​“if your ​‘usband like only for one night someone better than you, you ​‘urry to divorce. You break up your family like that!” She snapped her fingers. ​“It is stupid. In France we know that such a little thing happens to any man, but then our women have, I think, more intelligence in marriage.” — I hope I am always willing to learn. ​“What do they do?” I asked. — ​“They suffer,” she said laconically, ​“and they do nothing- but they keep their ​‘omes. You ​‘ave a proverb about cutting off your noses to make angry your faces, ​‘aven’t you? But you do not, it seems, often remember it !” — Oh well …” [Eve Orme, Mountain Magic, London, Rich & Cowan, 1945, 2^d ed., p 60 – 61].

[For the record, ​“Don’t cut off your nose to spite your face” is an old English saying, a striking way to show irrational it is to inflict self-punishment upon oneself just for the sake of an hypothetical revenge.]

Equally unconventional was her treatment of opium use, still very much an issue in China and Southeast Asia at the time. When masters of French colonial literature displayed a somewhat morbid and voyeuristic fascination for this artificial paradise of the Orient, she painted opium smoking scenes in delicate pastels, describing in precise comments the effects on the user — to the point one can surmise she gave it a try -, and showing on harsh pencil portraits of emaciated, haggard faces, its consequences. And she depicted female users, which was then quite taboo. Then again, women have always been center stage in Léa Lafugie’s artistic vision of Asia. 

The 1930 Paris Exhibition by Lafugie

Cinq ans d’expéditions en Asie, Indes, Thibet, Siam, Indo-Chine, Japon par Lafugie, préface de Robert de Billy, ancien ambassadeur de France a Tokyo, Paris, Galerie, Pleyel, June 1930. [Lafugie’s Five Years of Expeditions in Asia: India, Thibet, Siam, Indo-China, Japan’, preface by Robert de Billy (former ambassador of France to Tokyo] exhibition catalog, Paris, Galerie Pleyel, opening June 1930]

1) Cover of the 1930 catalog. 2) Constance Crowninshield Coolidge (1892−1973), comtesse de Jumilhac, black chalk on paper signed John S. Sargent, 1915.

1) Cover of the 1930 catalog. 2) Constance Crowninshield Coolidge (1892−1973), comtesse de Jumilhac, black chalk on paper signed John S. Sargent, 1915.

The catalog lists 392 works [187 exhibited] sorted by geographical area and medium:

• Les Indes [India], 115 works: oil on canvas paintings (13) and watercolors (108).
• Birmanie [Burma]: 14 works: watercolors.
• Thibet [Tibet]:
• Le Siam [Siam]: 14 works: oil on canvas (2), watercolors (12).
• Indo-Chine [Indochina]: 31 works: oil on canvas (2), watercolors (29), 10 works related to Cambodia and Angkor.
• Chine [China]: 78 works: oil on canvas (20), watercolors (58).
• Japon [Japan]: 36 works: oil on canvas (4), watercolors (32).

In addition, the artist-traveler gave the following ​’causeries’ [unformal talks], complete with screening of numerous photos taken by Lafugie herself:

• Le 5 Juin, à 5 heures. Causerie sur mes deux expéditions au Thibet. — Comment j’ai vécu sous la tente. — Dans les Himalayas. — Le Korakorum à 5 et 8.000 mêtres d’altitude. — Mes visites dans les monastères bouddhistes.- Les grands lamas. — Les gouverneurs. — 50 projections de photos prises par moi-même. [June 5, 5:00 p.m. Talk about my two expeditions to Tibet. — How I lived in a tent. — In the Himalayas. — Korakorum at 5,000 and 8,000 meters above sea level. — My visits to Buddhist monasteries. — The high lamas. — The governors. — Slide screening of 50 photos taken by myself.]
• Le 13 Juin, à 5 heures. Causerie sur l’Inde des mille et une nuits. — Mes séjours dans les Palais des Maharajas. — Portraits des Princes et Princesses dans leurs costumes. — La splendeur des fêtes de nuit. — Les danseuses hindoues. — Leur caste. — 50 projections de photos
  prises par moi-même. [June 13, 5:00 p.m. Talk about India’s Arabian Nights. — My stays in the Palaces of the Maharajas. — Portraits of Princes and Princesses in their costumes. — Splendor of the night festivals. — Hindu dancers. — Their caste. — Slide screening of 50 photos taken by myself.]
• Le 20 Juin, à 5 heures. Comment et par quels moyens j’ai parcouru le Siam de Birmanie à Bangkok à travers les forêts vierges.-Les ruines bouddhistes de la jungle. — Sur les rapides du Mekong en pirogue. — Le Laos peu connu. — 50 projections de photos prises par moi-même. [June 20, 5:00 p.m. How and by what means I traveled across Siam from Burma to Bangkok through primeval forests. — The Buddhist ruins of the jungle. — On the Mekong Rapids in a Canoe. — Little-known Laos. — Slide screening of 50 photos taken by myself.]
• Le 21 Juin, à 5 heures. La Chine du Yunnan à Pékin. — Les ” fleurs ” de Shanghai. — Comment j’ai vécu dans les monastères bouddhistes. — 50 projections de photos prises par moi-même. [June 21, 5:00 p.m. China from Yunnan to Beijing. — The ​“Flowers” of Shanghai. — How I Lived in Buddhist Monasteries. — Slide screening of 50 photos taken by myself.]

Some 30 bronzes, ceramics, shawls, dresses, drawings and cult objects from India, Tibet and China, belonging to the author’s personal collection, were also exhibited.