Henrik Ibsen is portrayed in a compelling close bust cabinet card with the name Ibsen written in script on the front mount below the image, showing the Norwegian playwright in his later years in a confrontational and immediately recognizable frontal pose. Ibsen faces the camera directly with a penetrating expression beneath heavy brows, his voluminous white hair rising dramatically above his head in wild waves, his full white beard spreading broadly across his chest. He wears a dark double-breasted coat buttoned to the chest over a white shirt visible only at the throat, and wire-rimmed round spectacles rest on his nose. The composition is three-quarter bust and the tight framing gives the portrait an intensity that mirrors Ibsen's formidable public persona.

The striking visual effect of Ibsen's electrified white hair, beard, spectacles, and direct gaze made his photographic portrait immediately recognizable across Europe and America during the height of his fame in the 1880s and 1890s, and this image type was widely reproduced for the international collecting market. No photographer's imprint appears on either face of the card.

Henrik Ibsen (1828–1906) was the founding figure of modern realistic drama, whose plays A Doll's House (1879), Ghosts (1881), Hedda Gabler (1890), The Master Builder (1892), and The Wild Duck (1884) transformed the European theatre by introducing psychologically complex characters, contemporary social problems, and the technique of retrospective revelation. George Bernard Shaw, who championed Ibsen in The Quintessence of Ibsenism (1891), credited him as the most important theatrical influence of the modern era.

The front mount bears the inscription Ibsen in script. The reverse bears penciled inscriptions reading Henrik Ibsen and Ibsen / Ibsen Henrik / 1828–1906 / Author with no photographer's imprint and dealer code 6/08/13 / LOHTEZ.