Louis Delaporte

[5] Years later, in his 1880 book Voyage au Cambodge, Delaporte recorded his impressions:[6] The sight of these strange ruins struck me, too, with a keen astonishment, I admired the bold and grandiose design of these monuments no less than the perfect harmony of all their parts.

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 that extends from the Indus to the Pacific.

[11] After an interruption caused by the Franco-Prussian War (1870–1871) Louis Delaporte obtained the support of France's Société de Géographie and of several French government ministries for a new expedition.

[4] In May 1873, his team left France taking with them many gifts, including engravings based on the works of Rembrandt and Rubens as well as copies of paintings by Nicolas Poussin and Théodore Gérard.

[12] From his earliest encounter with Khmer architecture and sculpture, Delaporte was convinced that it should be compared to the best of Classical art:[14] It differs, indeed, from those great classics of the Mediterranean basin that have long captured our admiration: it is no longer these majestic colonnades, these great calm surfaces of Greece or Egypt; these are, in contrast, forms [that are] laborious, complex, tormented: overlays, multiple withdrawals, mazes, galleries shaded from daylight, jagged towers, pyramids with countless stories and arrows, a great profusion of ornaments and sculptures, constant effects of light and shadow that enrich the whole without altering its majesty, and blend beautifully with the intense light and lush tropical vegetations: it is, in short, another form of beauty.