French illustrator, printmaker, painter and author, Ibels studied at the Académie Julian with Pierre Bonnard and Édouard Vuillard and was a founding member of Les Nabis (1889). With Vuillard and Maurice Denis he soon caught the public eye and earned the nickname ‘le Nabis journaliste’. Ibels’ images were powerful and heavily graphic. He drew inspiration from life on the street, cafés, the circus and boxing ring. His graphic style owed much to the art of Honoré Daumier, Japanese woodcuts, Paul Gauguin and the Pont-Aven School. Ibels collaborated with Toulouse-Lautrec and became involved in avant-garde theater. He exhibited at the Salon des Indépendants for the first time in 1891.

From 1891 to 1899, Ibels contributed to several journals and newspapers in which he published captioned sketches representing typical characters. He also drew posters, theatre programmes, music sheet covers and numerous lithographs on the theme of concerts and performances: at the theatre, the music hall, the circus. In the journal La Plume for 15th January 1893, the critic Charles Saunier notes, regarding a series of lithographs representing Pierrot and Colombina: "The characters and their elegant gestures are delineated with a unique line (…) M. Ibels is constantly preoccupied with making a good use of the resources offered by the processes he uses." (quoted in A-M. Sauvage's « Henri-Gabriel Ibels », Nouvelles de l’Estampe, no. 129, p. 28).