Pierre Comba

Pierre Comba (Nice, September 1st, 1859 - Nice, 1934) is a French artist-painter. He is famous for his watercolours illustrating the life of the Alpine hunters.

Biography

His/her father with the homonymous name (Châble, 1834 - Nice, 1872), originating in the Province of the Genevese in Savoy, was also painter. It is him which inculcates the first rudiments of its Article to him.

In the Years 1880, it settles with Paris, and between the School of the Art schools in the class of Jean-Leon Gérôme, large historical schoolmaster. In the capital, it benefits from the many bonds of his father in the intellectual and artistic mediums.

Conscript, it is used for the 92° regiment of line and share in North Africa where it takes part in the countryside of Tunisia in 1881. Encouraged by the military painters, it enters to the Deposit of the War as auxiliary draftsman in September 1883. It is established in October 1887 as painter painter in watercolours but resigns, for health reasons, in November 1888. Pierre Comba was the last official painter of the French Army remunerated as tel.

End 1888, Pierre Comba settles definitively in its birthplace where he Marie, quickly widowed, he marries Venetian which gives him a son in 1896. Former painter-soldier, it obtains the authorization of the Staff, to follow, bag and material with the back, the operations of summer like winter in the whole of the alpine solid mass (County of Nice, Dauphiné, Savoy). He thus will continue during twenty-six years, until the beginning of the Great War to follow the units of Alpine hunters in their missions of the Large Alps to the Mediterranean and to represent them in their daily life.

In 1903, he becomes member of the Company of the Painters of Mountain where he exposes regularly of 1907 to 1914. It drew for the Annuaires of the French Army and was the collaborator of several reviews like Le Figaro Illustré or the Scout of Nice. Several cities and especially Nice order to him illustrations for their advertizing documents intended for the tourists. He was also requested several towns of mountain for their illustration, like the Tourist office of Annecy to illustrate by watercolours the cover of his guides of 1904 with 1909.

Of 1914 with 1918, it takes again service as painter of the Army and share on the face, mainly with the Alpine hunters whom it follows in the battles that they carry out, of the frozen escarpments of the Vosges to the muddy trenches of the Sum. It will bring back excellent sketches of them and very moving watercolours.

After the war, it continues to bring its collaboration and to be even devoted for works by carrying out tickets of tombola, programs, memories patriotic. It decorates as the hearths with hairy as municipalities and associations found in many localities.

Its work

It has a perfect command of the Aquarelle. He excelled in the representation of the Alpine hunters in operation, on the battle fields or at rest.

Museums

Museum Masséna in Nice, museum of Art & History
Museum From the Dauphine in Grenoble
Museum of the Troops of Mountain in Grenoble.

Books

A. Bexon: a painter at the Alpine hunters, P. Comba , ED. Itinera Alpina, 2006, 160 pages with more than 300 reproductions colors.

External bond

Editions Alpina
Pierre Comba on Country of Nice

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