A philanthropic collaboration between the luxury house Hermès and the wildlife conservation organisation Panthera aims to revive the work of Robert Dallet, the late French wildlife artist and Hermès designer, to benefit wildcat research and conservation.
The organisations jointly launched the Robert Dallet Initiative for Wild Cat Research this year, which helps fund Panthera’s efforts to protect wildcats and their landscapes. As part of the initiative, a travelling exhibition was conceived titled Fierce and Fragile: The Art of Robert Dallet, which opened on Sunday at the Bruce Museum of Arts and Science in Greenwich, Connecticut (until 13 March 2016). The show features 75 paintings, drawings and sketches, including designs that the artist created for Hermès in the 1980s to 90s. It is anticipated to continue for at least two more years in ten different cities, including Paris, Munich, Shanghai, Hong Kong and Mumbai.
Pierre-Alexis Dumas, the artistic director of Hermès, remembers Robert Dallet as a prolific illustrator but a melancholic person, who passed away in 2006 still largely unrecognised as an artist. “This emotional collaboration with Panthera allows us once again to reveal to the world the strengths of this wildlife artist, and also to exercise the same empathy that he once did for these animals and for nature,” says Dumas.