Raphy Dallèves

Raphy Dallèves (born in Sion on 26 January 1878, where he died on 6 July 1940) was a Valaisan painter of the École de Savièse.

Biography Raphy Dallèves was the son of Raphaël, Chancellor of State, and of Marie Cropt, daughter of the founder of the first School of Law of the Valais. During his classical studies at the Collège de Sion, he took drawing and painting lessons from Joseph Morand, a Valaisan portrait painter whose studio and residence are none other than the present-day Manoir de la ville de Martigny. Encouraged by Morand, the young Dallèves continued his artistic studies in Paris between 1899 and 1905: the Académie Julian and the École des Beaux-Arts.

In 1903 he was among the founders of the Savièse section of the Society of Swiss Painters and Sculptors. The same year, he took part in the creation of the Société des traditions valaisannes. In 1937 he was appointed a member of the cantonal commission for historic monuments.

He was close to the Vaud painter Ernest Biéler (1863–1948), who had spent every year at Savièse since 1884 and settled there from 1900.

The influence of the older Vaud artist on the Sion painter was considerable, in particular regarding the use of a technique that had fallen into disuse, distemper or the a tempera technique, which both studied from the painters known as the "primitives", namely the Flemish Primitives on the one hand and the Italian or Quattrocento primitives on the other. These investigations were undertaken by the two painters from 1906.