Voyage au Cambodge. L'Architecture Khmer

The first major study of Khmer architecture, and a very handsome book. Delaporte, as a young officer and a talented artist, was a member of the 1866-68 Mekong Expedition and was responsible for the magnificent illustrations in the official account of that epic journey. He subsequently returned to Cambodia and prepared this important study of the country's architecture. A great evangelist for the art of Cambodia, he wrote here about his 1866 visit to Angkor Wat that "Khmer art, issuing from the mixture of India and China, purified, ennobled by artists whom one might call the Athenians of the Far East, has remained the most beautiful expression of human genius in this vast part of Asia" ("L'art khmer, issu du mélange de l'Inde et de la Chine, épuré, ennobli par des artistes qu'on pourrait appeler les Athéniens de l'Extrême-Orient, est resté en effet comme la plus belle expression du génie humain dans cette vaste partie de l'Asie...").

On a second expedition Delaporte brought back some seventy pieces of Khmer sculpture which would form the nucleus of exhibitions at the 1878 Paris Exposition and later at the Palais du Trocadéro, where he became chief curator of the Musée Indochinois, the collection later moving to the Musée Guimet.