Ibels 8 illustrated songs "On poems by Gaston Couté

The question of choosing a profession seems never to have arisen for Ibels. Born into a family of free thinkers and raised in the cult of the arts and independence of spirit, could he become anything other than a free man and a creator? When he obtained his baccalaureate, his decision was already made: he would be a painter. His parents enrolled him in the Académie Julian. But the teaching provided by this school quickly put him off. Unwilling to repeat the experience elsewhere, he decides to learn his trade alone. After all, isn't it enough to study the work of the painters he admires and, if necessary, to ask his elders for advice?

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 The method is risky, but the neophyte is gifted: also he will burn the stages It is a tribune whose I' eloquence is in the feature: a militant of the art which takes part in all the debates of ideas of his time. He fights, among other things, for the recognition of the rights of authors: the access to the art and the culture for all

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In 1900, he abandons painting to devote himself only to engraving. A painting is a unique work, that hangs at home the amateur fortunate enough to pay the price. A print, usually printed in a hundred copies, remains accessible to a larger number of people. This is even more true for scores. Ibels attaches great importance to the work he does at Ondet. For him, it is not a secondary activity. In fact, he has gained the confidence of his publisher and convinced him to call on the best artists of the moment to illustrate his small formats. Is it the influence of the poetic texts of his friend from Beauce. Gaston Costé, or the reading of the novel of Émile Zola. The Earth, that he will translate into images? Ibels, the city-dweller, evokes wonderfully the country loves. It seems that for him also the happiness of love is in the meadow. His work is rich in paintings in which we can see, after the heavy tasks required by the land, the massive bodies, exhausted and greedy, of couples who embrace in the fragrant scents of straw and hay. With this theme, through his vigorous line and the density of his color, Ibels' art reaches its fullness

. The covers of The Pretty Julie, The Alms of the Good Girl and The Gourgandines show this clearly. But Ibels also knows how to translate, in his black and white plates, the revolt and anger of Gaston Couté as for The Christ in wood and The Gâs that lost the spirit.