Camille Bombois
(French, 1883-1970)

"L'Arbre Abattu", ca. 1925

oil on canvas
signed lower left "Bombois Clle", verso with "Perls Galleries, New York, N.Y." label. Framed.
25-5/8" x 19-5/8"

Provenance: Sotheby's, New York, November 11, 1992, Impressionist & Modern Painting sale, lot 309; Perls Galleries, New York, N.Y.; The Flatt Collection.

Notes: Camille Bombois, a peripatetic autodidact, has a background as colorful as his palette. He spent his early years living on a barge. At the age of twelve, he left school to become a farmer. Wrestling at the county fairs, however, landed him a new metier far away from the fields as a strongman for a traveling circus. In 1907, Bombois moved to Paris, finding work as a railroad laborer. It was during this time that he began exhibiting his paintings in sidewalk venues beside street performers in Montmartre. This early period of work was characterized by somber colors, awkwardly influenced by old master paintings. It was not until after World War I, after almost five years in the trenches as a soldier, that Bombois embraced his inner joie-de-vivre, allowing his compositions to be colored by the circus and the richness of his childhood on the canals of his native Burgundy. The vibrant still lifes (lots 92 and 93), boldly defined through contrasting complimentary colors, have a theatricality redolent of the circus. Drawing upon his experiences, Bombois favored whimsical landscapes with fishing boats and woodlands, like the one featured in lot 94 of children at play, in which the garden appears as an Edenic haven ensconced by trees. The subject and use of woodlands as a framing device reappear throughout Bombois' works, including lots 90 and 91. In these paintings, the influence of the Morvan forest and waterways off the Yonne river are beautifully captured through the wondrous eyes of a child.