Camille Bombois was born in Vernarey-les-Laumes, Cotes d'Or in France in 1883. He was educated at Laroche from 1889 until 1899, and self-educated in painting after 1899. He served in the French Army from 1914 to 1918 on active duty in Chemen-Creux and Chenemdes-Dames and he was decorated for bravery three times.

Bombois worked as a circus strong man, a night watchman, a builder and a newspaper typesetter in Paris until 1924. Then he painted full time from 1925 until 1970. He died in Paris in June 1970.

Bombois is outstanding among naive artists for the strength and vigor of his work, which was certainly a reflection of his own character. It was this quality of vitality which assured him a position of pre-eminence among the French "primitives". An ingredient of folk-art merges into the artless candour of popular illustration. His favorite themes were taken from the circus and the fairground with a decorative quality that lend a special charm.

Written and compiled by Jean Ershler Schatz, artist and researcher from Laguna Woods, California.

Source:
Contemporary Artists, 2nd Edition

Camille Bombois was born in Vernarey-les-Laumes, Cotes d'Or in France in 1883. He left school to work on a farm at age twelve and began drawing four years later. In 1907, Bombois fulfilled his dream of moving to Paris, where he married and worked as a railway laborer, eventually finding a night job at a newspaper printing plant handling heavy newsprint rolls. Despite the exhausting nature of his job he painted from dawn to dusk. 1914 marked the beginning of four-and-a-half years of military service in World War I. Bombois spent much of it on the front line, earning three decorations for bravery.

Upon his return home, encouraged that his wife had succeeded in selling a number of his paintings in his absence, he resumed his routine of night labor and daytime painting. By 1922, his sidewalk displays in Montmartre had begun attracting the attention of collectors, as well as art dealer Wilhelm Uhde, who "discovered" him.

His first exhibition was the 1937 "Maîtres populaires de la réalité", Paris. Critics compared Bombois' work to that of Henri Rousseau, which it resembled in its naïve drawing, crisp delineation of form, and attention to detail.

Camille Bombois painted with a strong man’s delicacy. Everything visible is precisely defined and set off from the indistinctness of light and movement. Bombois loved the massive darkness of the black paint he uses so heavily. He adored the billiard green, the velvet red, the strong yellow, the saccharine violet of circus posters and the interiors of bordellos. They correspond to the crude objectivity of his drawings. In his landscapes and still lives alike, Bombois was a brilliant colorist and a genius of depth.


His paintings, Les Etangs, a Rixensart, Belgium, is a lovely landscape featuring the ponds in Rixensart, Belgium. The composition highlights Bombois’ considerable talent and unique style. The painting depicts a vast lily pond with tree line, cottony clouds and figures walking the trails along the ponds, featuring red and blue outfits. The careful attention to space, the effects of reflected light on water and the color palette of green and blue, punctuated with red, create a serene atmosphere.