Les lutteurs 1898

Issued in 1898 as the third supplement to Les Maîtres de l’Affiche, Les Lutteurs captures a backstage moment with a group of wrestlers waiting to enter the ring. Ibels arranges the bulky figures on a raised platform beside a short flight of steps, their red sashes and singlets flashing against a field of graphite greys and leafy green. The drawing is quick and muscular—short, nervous strokes model the bodies; a restrained palette and flat color planes push the scene toward modern graphic design rather than naturalism.

Unlike the monthly advertising plates, the supplements were bonus prints issued to subscribers—self-contained artworks not tied to a specific product. As with the series, this sheet was printed in the smaller Maîtres format on wove paper and typically bears the publisher’s embossed blindstamp at lower right, with Ibels’s printed signature in the image—key details for collectors.

Henri-Gabriel Ibels (1867–1936), sometimes called the “Nabi journalist,” moved between fine art and the popular press. A close associate of the Nabis, he brought their bold simplifications to posters, sheet-music covers, and café-concert imagery, and supplied incisive illustrations to avant-garde journals. His favorite subjects—performers, crowds, and working-class entertainments—are on full display here: the tense pause before spectacle, rendered with caricatural verve and modern economy.

A vivid, documentary slice of fin-de-siècle popular culture—and one of the liveliest non-advertising highlights of the Maîtres supplements.

Sport - France

Supplement The masters of the poster Pl. 3

Printed by Chaix

Good condition