French primitive painter (of the self-taught group) that includes Rousseau and Vivin. Descended from country folk, Bombois has been both a day laborer on farms and a member of a wrestling troupe. In 1907 he began to study the Old Masters in the Louvre and to paint. When he returned from a distinguished service in World War I he found that his wife had succeeded in selling all of his pictures. Since 1923 his reputation has been growing and his paintings of people and landscapes, directly seen and unsophisticated, are among the most effective of their kind.