Louis Delaporte
Louis Delaporte ( born January 11, 1842 in the hole; † May 3, 1925 in Paris) was a French researcher. As a companion of Ernest Doudart de Lagree he has the view of Angkor in Cambodia today traced in the 19th century and eventually made known to the Khmer art and architecture in Europe.
Early years
Louis Delaporte was the son of a lawyer and went into a very young age with the approval of his father at sea. He left the Collège Orleans and 1858 at the Naval Academy in Brest. In 1860 he was accepted as a cadet and ordered to Mexico. After several expeditions, including to Iceland, he was lieutenant.
Because of his drawing skills were sent Delaporte 1866 to Cochin, where he on its mission to explore the Mekong to accompany Ernest Doudart de Lagree to its. Here he discovered the ruins of the ancient Khmer city Angkor. The expedition ended due to the climatic conditions in a disaster: Doudart de Lagree lost his life and you had to reach the sea via Xieng Khouang on the Yangtze River. Francis Garnier led the group back on the sea route to Saigon.
The ruins of Angkor impressed Delaporte so that he compared them and the kingdom for which they had been created with ancient Egypt. From now on he devoted his life to research on and preservation of Angkor. In 1868 he returned to France, where he was awarded the Legion of Honor.
After a spell on the occasion of the Franco-German War 1870/71 he began in 1873 a new mission with the help of the Navy, the Foreign Ministry and the Ministry of Education, which should explore the navigability of the Red River as far as Yunnan. Here he placed under the greatest difficulties together the first collection of Khmer art in France. He also produced detailed drawings of stone witnesses in Bayon and Angkor Vat.
After landing, the hundreds of boxes in the port of Toulon Delaporte experienced a big disappointment, because the Louvre refused an exhibition of the strange art. Delaporte therefore brought under the castle of Compiègne, where he opened a small exhibition. Only in 1878 for the Universal Exhibition in Paris they showed a larger collection in the Trocadéro and until 1882 there an official museum of Khmer art was established.
1881 Delaporte went on a recent trip to Southeast Asia, but forced him an illness to return to France, but not without rich harvest of other works of art for the collection. In 1889, the museum opened in Trocadéro for the arts in Southeast Asia. Delaporte also supported further work in French Indochina: École française d' Extrême 1898, the Orient and in 1918, the Conservatory in Phnom Penh was founded, which was led by Georges Groslier.
Delaporte was director of the Museum of East Asian Art in 1924. He died on 3 May 1925 in Paris.
According to his records appeared:
- " Voyage au Cambodge: L'architecture khmer " ( Broché ).