When Robert Dallet decided, in the 1950s, to commit his life to depicting wildlife in pencil, ink, watercolor, and gouache, he started visiting European zoos, botanical gardens, and natural-history museums. He later made extensive journeys to Africa to capture animals in their habitats and was hailed as a naturalist in the 19thcentury mold. “I’m not a painter,” Dallet insisted. “I don’t interpret, I study. Right down to the texture of fur, the shape of a claw or a hoof, I am a scientist, and I mean that very modestly.”
In the ’80s Jean-Louis Dumas, then the creative director at Hermès, met Dallet and commissioned him to design one of the brand’s signature silktwill scarves. Kenya, showing a proud lion and lioness encircled by leaping gazelles, was such a success that…