Simon Combes

Popular wildlife artist

Simon Glenton Combes, artist: born Shaftesbury, Dorset 20 June 1940; twice married (one son, one daughter); died near Nakuru, Kenya 12 December 2004.

Anyone who weeps tears over the loss of a pet caterpillar or gives a ride to an uncooperative tortoise on the seat of his bicycle because it is too heavy to carry must be a warm-hearted person. Such was the best-selling wildlife artist Simon Combes, who has been killed by a buffalo in Kenya, the country that he loved and in which he lived for much of his life.

Combes was born in Dorset in 1940. When he was five years old, his father returned from the Second World War and joined a government scheme to help those coming out of the services to acquire and settle on land to farm in Kenya. The following year the family moved to the Great Rift Valley; in Combes's own words, "It must have been hell to everybody else but it was a wonderful adventure for a small boy."

It is clear from Combes's narrative of his early life, in An African Experience: wildlife art and adventure in Kenya (1990), that education was far from his mind. He attended the Duke of York School in Nairobi. By now the shadow of Mau Mau had begun to manifest itself - it must have been a difficult time for young white children growing up. Nevertheless, the rebellious side of Combes's nature came to the fore, and he made a great friend of a Kipsigis tribesman. Together, in spite of the dangers, they walked in the bush and Simon became a close friend of the man, whom he regarded as his mentor.

However, things did not go well for the family farm and instead his father was offered a job to manage a 50,000-acre ranch owned by Lord Delamere. Combes was determined to rebel against any ideas of school and "civilisation", deciding to go and live, in his own words, "in the bush for ever". At the age of 18 he took a job managing a 2,000-acre farm with 150 employees in the Rift Valley.

The following year he was drafted into the Kenya Regiment to do his National Service. He was then accepted for officer training at Sandhurst, but first spent a period of time in Uganda, where he had the dubious distinction of teaching Idi Amin military tactics and etiquette.

Back in Kenya, he was commissioned into the King's African Rifles and later served as commander of Kenya's airborne forces. He fought in the deserts in the north of the country, in the guerrilla war against Somalia. Here, he took up a new hobby, drawing and painting the nomadic people and the landscape in which they lived. His first exhibition was held, while he was still serving as a soldier, at the New Stanley Art Gallery in Nairobi in 1969. Almost all the paintings sold. In 1974 he retired from the army to paint full time for a living.

In 1978 Combes came back to Britain with his wife Susie (whom he had married in 1966), first to Worcestershire and then Gloucestershire, so that their children could be educated in England. They continued to spend three months every winter in Kenya, where Combes would work as a photographic guide on safari, collecting material and seeking inspiration for his paintings. He returned to live permanently in Kenya five years ago.

Combes would have been the first to admit that his artistic breakthrough came when his work was recognised by the Greenwich Workshop in Connecticut, which began publishing his work in 1979 in limited-edition prints and canvases. Success came fast - his photo-realistic paintings proved enormously popular, and he became undoubtedly one of the leading wildlife artists in the world, with the majority of his pictures being sold in the United States. The company also published Great Cats (1998), an illustrated travelogue of Combes's 1993 journey through Asia, Africa, North and South America painting big cats in their natural habitats.

Simon Combes and I became close friends in the 1970s. We shared many hilarious moments, raising money for wildlife, drawing on tablecloths at dinner parties. I'll never forget an evening hosted by Greenwich Workshop: we returned to our hotel in the bus, somewhat inebriated, each trying to outdo the other in highly dangerous tactics, including hanging upside down from the luggage rack.

As well as achieving worldwide success and winning awards, Combes was also an active supporter of wildlife conservation organisations, including the Rhino Rescue Trust (becoming Kenya Representative and Project Director in 2003) and the David Shepherd Wildlife Foundation. We both felt, as wildlife artists, that we owed our success to the animals we painted. His immense generosity, through donating pictures, raised many thousands of pounds.

Combes's knowledge of bushcraft was unmatched. He certainly had very close encounters with animals in the bush but would never regard them as dangerous unless given a reason to do so. I am sure that, had he survived this terrible catastrophe, Combes would have said, "I know why that buffalo charged me. He had probably been shot at by a poacher armed with an AK47."

David Shepherd