The multi-faceted Louis Delaport: an inspiring character for the new generation of art collectors
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- Wedding portrait of Louis Delaporte and Hélène Savard, 1876, private collection.
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- Louis Delaporte, Voyage au Cambodge, L’architecture Khmer, Delagrave, Paris, 1880.
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- Portrait of Jayavarman VII, Bayon style, province of Preah Vihear, XII-XIII cent, sandstone.
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- Dancers, Fragment of a fronton, Bayon, Angkor Thom, XII-XIII cent., sandstone, mission Louid Delaporte 1873.
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- Lokesvara irradiant, Bayon style, province of Preah Vihear, XII-XIII cent., sandstone, mission Louid Delaporte 1873.
According to the exhibition “Angkor, naissance d’un mythe”, currently at the Musée Guimet in Paris, Louis Delaport was not only an extraordinary explorer, museum curator and scientist who diclosed to the western society the splendor of the Khmer temples. He was also a sensitive observer of something entirely new to the eye of the society which he belonged to. The portrait of Delaport given by the show is supported by the fact that recently the government of Cambodia had collaborated with France and Unesco in order to patrol the country’s archeological sites.
This show, along with the recent restitution to Cambodia of the so-called “Kneeling attendants”, two tenth-century sandstone sculptures which had been displayed for nearly 20 years at the Metropolitan Museum in New York, made us think at the many contemporary art collectors who are driven only by the hope of buying, for a little amount of money, the next Francis Bacon or Wade Gyton. Be careful, because: 1) collecting is a discovering; 2) you have to respect the sources.
July 15, 2015
