My fingers and toes are crossed in the hope that an impending delivery of sculptures from the UK will contain this remarkable bronze head, one of the most dramatic artworks in Douglas Latchford’s personal collection, showing the fierce face of a Dvarapala, one of the famed temple guardians to be found in front of the entrance to a temple, designed to make visitors think twice before entering the sacred chamber. The bulging eyes and fangs suggest this is an Asura Dvarapala, who would be the fiercest of a duo of guardians standing either side of a doorway, with a flaming headdress, large earrings and usually grasping a large mace with both hands. His alter-ego, a Deva Dvarapala would have a much calmer demeanour. Unfortunately, we only have the head to view but his body would’ve been immense. Latchford was so impressed by this bronze that he made him the cover star of his 2011 coffee-table book, Khmer Bronzes: New Interpretations of the Past, that he authored with scholar Emma Bunker and which he self-published. In it, he stated the bronze head was part of a private collection belonging to the Skanda Trust. The publication of the Pandora Papers in late 2021 exposed that the secretive Skanda Trust turned out to be Latchford’s own offshore trust in Jersey, with ground-breaking investigative work by ICIJ, Washington Post and other media exposing the truth. The Trust held Latchford’s antiquities collection and his assets in the trust were later transferred to a second trust, the Siva Trust. No less than 80 bronzes in the book were credited to Skanda Trust. The whereabouts of many of these bronzes today are unknown.
The Dvarapala was photographed in Douglas Latchford’s personal collection, which he kept in his London home in the exclusive Mayfair area, in 2014. The British-born art dealer had homes in London and Bangkok, from where he ran his international smuggling network, sending stone and bronze sculptures to museums, private collectors and auction houses around the globe for more than fifty years. On his death in 2020 his daughter, Julia Copleston, promised to return his personal hoard of Khmer artifacts to Cambodia, with a handful of stone statues and a large cache of gold jewelry pieces, having already been returned to their rightful home. Another delivery of 70+ artifacts from Latchford’s family is expected anytime soon. The Dvarapala bronze was featured in one of three books that Latchford and Bunker published, and the description of the temple guardian in the Khmer Bronzes book is as follows:
‘An exciting bronze cast in a late Bakheng style is this Dvarapala head from a long-lost body that must have been colossal. Fierce features define the face: bulging eyes, eyebrows represented by a single double-bowed line, curvy moustache, and two tiny fangs protruding from each corner of the generous rimmed mouth. A spiky tiered square headdress, two rosettes, and the jagged remains of a diadem distinguish the head. The head was cast from a wax model formed over a clay core supported by an iron armature and held in place by iron chaplets (core pins), several of which remain. The Skanda Trust Dvarapala head reflects the new type of guardian figure that appeared on Shaivite temples in Roluos, such as Bakong, the state temple of Indravarman I and Prasat Preah Ko. The Prasat Preah Ko dvarapalas are shown with lavish personal adornments – diadems, pectorals, upper torso bands, earrings, ear-rosettes, armlets and loose girdles – all carved to simulate actual gold ornaments of the period represented in late 8th and 9th century narrative relief in Central Java … These similarities suggest that the Khmer dvarapala images may derive from Central Java where fierce figures abound in the narrative bas-reliefs depicting the life of Rama, one of Vishnu’s earthly incarnations… The Skanda Trust Dvarapala dates somewhere between the Roluos dvarapalas of the last quarter of the ninth century and a large sandstone dvarapala head in the National Museum of Cambodia dated by Boisselier to the second quarter of the tenth century.’ [Extract from Khmer Bronzes, 2011]. My fingers and toes are crossed for good news in the near future.Credit By :Andy Brouwer