Henri Marchal

Henri Marchal (1876 to 1970) was a French architect and Conservator of Angkor who brought the restoration method called anastylosis to Cambodia. For close to 40 years his life was bound up with the restoration of the temples of Angkor, and he spent his last years in Siem Reap.

Banteay Srei, where Marchal began rebuilding by anastylosis late in 1931. Photo: Olaf Tausch, CC BY 3.0

Historical figure details
Roles	Architect; Conservator of Angkor
Period	1916 to 1953
Born	1876
Died	1970, Siem Reap, Cambodia
Associated with	École française d'Extrême-Orient, Angkor, Banteay Srei
Country	France; Cambodia
Subjects	History & Remembrance; Visual Arts & Design

Training and early posts

Marchal earned two baccalaureates in 1895, one in letters and philosophy and one in letters and mathematics. He was then admitted to the architecture section of the École des Beaux-Arts, in the studio of Gaston Redon. At the same time he lectured at popular universities and taught an evening class in industrial drawing.

In 1905 he was appointed Inspector of Civil Buildings for Cambodia, and he traveled to Thailand to prepare plans for a new French legation there. In 1910 he passed the certificate examination in the Cambodian language and became assistant curator of the museum of the École française d'Extrême-Orient (EFEO) in Phnom Penh, in charge of its new section of Khmer antiquities. In 1912 he moved to Saigon as inspector of civil buildings for Cochinchina.

In 1913 he published an essay on modern Cambodian art. Magali An Berthon, in a 2021 doctoral thesis on Cambodian silk, writes that it repeated a view common among French colonials: that Cambodians lacked aptitude for trade and industry but had a natural gift for the arts. Marchal argued that Cambodian arts, however much they had declined, could supply decorative patterns for industries such as ceramics, woodwork, wallpaper, stained glass, jewelry and embroidery.

Conservator of Angkor (1916 to 1933)

In 1916 Marchal succeeded Jean Commaille, the first Conservator of Angkor. He was seconded to the EFEO to direct its Angkor conservation office. He first resumed clearing the undergrowth from Angkor Wat and the main buildings around the royal square of Angkor Thom, among them the Bayon, the Baphuon, the royal palace and Preah Pithu. He also located many smaller ruins inside the walls of Angkor Thom and just outside them. He published this survey in 1918 as a study of the secondary monuments and Buddhist terraces of Angkor Thom. In 1919 he became a permanent member of the EFEO and Conservator of Angkor.

Maurice Glaize's guide to the monuments credits him with clearing the Terrace of the Elephants in 1916, the Phimeanakas from 1916 to 1918 and Tep Pranam in 1918. At Preah Pithu, a group of five small temples and terraces, he carried out clearing from 1918 to 1920. He cleared Thommanon in 1919 and 1920 and again from 1925 to 1927. Glaize also lists Prasat Suor Prat and the South Kleang in 1919 and 1920, Ta Keo in 1920, Banteay Kdei with Ch. Batteur from 1920 to 1922, Neak Poan from 1922 to 1924 and Pre Rup with Georges Trouvé from 1930 to 1935. He cleared Phnom Bakheng at different times from 1919 to 1930. He cleared Preah Palilay in 1918 and 1919 and published a study of the temple in 1922.

At the Phimeanakas in 1916 he dug around the base of the pyramid. At the foot of its eastern entrance he found a large stele broken into 70 pieces, which was put back together and is known as the Grande Stele. Using the enclosures still visible in elevation, he divided the whole royal enclosure into five zones from east to west, the second of which surrounds the Phimeanakas and the large pool.

Beyond clearing, he made targeted repairs to the Bakheng from 1922 to 1929 and to the Baphuon, the Bayon, the Victory Gate, Preah Khan and Banteay Kdei. He came to see that the methods of strengthening ruins used until then had their limits.

Anastylosis at Banteay Srei

Anastylosis means taking a monument completely apart and rebuilding it so that its structure is stable, restoring the ruin with its original stones as far as possible and adding new material where the structure needs it. In 1930 Marchal went to Java to study the method with the archaeological service of the Dutch East Indies. The architect Vann Molyvann said that the EFEO had sent him there to look into the technique, which the Dutch had perfected on their projects in Java. George Coedès supported its use at Angkor.

On his return Marchal applied it to Banteay Srei, a small temple found only in 1914, starting toward the end of 1931. The work ran from 1931 to 1933 or to 1936. Glaize noted that the temple's small size, its small blocks of durable sandstone, which kept their sharp edges, and its abundant, well-preserved decoration made the task easier. Even so, Marchal worked on a remote site that was hard to reach, with few resources and with laborers who had to be trained from the start. The EFEO describes the restoration as praised by all. Its success led the archaeological service to adopt anastylosis as its general method for restoring the monuments.

The method spread to other temples. In May 1934, drawing on the work at Banteay Srei, Marchal raised the feasibility of an anastylosis at Banteay Samre, and in the winter of 1936 he and Jacques Lagisquet uncovered the temple's eastern causeway. At the Bakong, Glaize records that Marchal began the clearing in 1936 and dug out the central well to a depth of 20 meters (66 feet). Glaize gives that depth as 6 meters (20 feet) below the ground level outside the base. Following his steps, Maurice Glaize adapted the method to the means available and to the value and condition of each building.

Head of the archaeological service

Georges Trouvé followed Marchal as Conservator in 1932. The EFEO dates Marchal's departure to 1933, when he formally retired and left the Angkor office to replace Henri Parmentier as head of the EFEO's archaeological service. In 1938, on his way back to France, he stayed in Ceylon and India. He described the journey in his Souvenir d'un ancien conservateur d'Angkor.

He reached France at the start of the war and stayed until 1946. That year he went to Pondicherry to direct the work at Virampatnam.

Return to Angkor (1947 to 1953)

A year later he was called back to replace Maurice Glaize as Conservator of Angkor, and he stayed six years. A note in the English edition of Glaize's guide gives 1953 as the end of his term. He restored the buildings along the western causeway of Angkor Wat in 1948 and worked that year on the Terrace of the Elephants and the Baphuon. In 1950 he worked at Banteay Kdei, Preah Khan and Thommanon. Notes in the same edition add that after the gallery of heaven and hell at Angkor Wat collapsed in 1947, he and Lagisquet began repairs that ended in 1950. They also record that his further digging at the Terrace of the Elephants in 1952 brought more reliefs inside the terrace to light at its northern end.

Laos and later life

After a short stay in France, Marchal went to Hanoi to look after the Louis Finot museum for a time. In 1954 he became technical adviser for historic monuments and head of the architecture office at the Ministry of Public Works of the Kingdom of Laos, a post he held until 1957. In 1957 the Department of Cults of the Royal Lao Government published his Le temple de Vat Phou, on the temple in Champassak province.

He retired for good in 1957 and chose to remain in Cambodia. He settled in Siem Reap, where he died in 1970 at the age of 94. Sappho Marchal (1904 to 2000) was his child.

Legacy

The EFEO credits Marchal with making its work professional by bringing to Khmer monuments the methods developed in Greece and Java. It regards his detailed descriptions of many monuments, in excavation journals, reports and monographs, as essential to understanding their architecture. In his 1993 preface to Glaize's guide, Jean Boisselier wrote that, Georges Trouvé aside, no one knew Angkor's monuments better than Marchal and Glaize. In the EFEO's virtual exhibition on the Baphuon, Pascal Royère quoted Marchal's remark that the Baphuon looked more like a mountain landscape than architecture, and placed the ruin he faced in the mid-1950s. An EFEO catalog of its photographs of Angkor includes an essay by Éric Bourdonneau on Marchal and his work at Banteay Srei. The EFEO's Angkor archives hold his special reports among the records of the conservation office.

Writings

Several of his articles appeared in the EFEO's journal, the Bulletin de l'EFEO. They covered the clearing of the Phimeanakas in 1916 and Preah Palilay in 1922, and in 1951 the form of the stupa in Cambodia. His 1913 essay on modern Cambodian art appeared in the bulletin of the Société des Études indochinoises. In 1948 he published L'architecture comparée dans l'Inde et dans l'Extrême-Orient, on the architecture of India and the Far East.

References