According to his Memoir, his mother fell on the ice and went into premature labour, causing him to be delivered by caesarean section and resulting in a middle name he attempted to hide throughout his life.

According to James Mitchell in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, the "unusual thoroughness" of his education "is reflected in the fluent prose, both of his published painting manuals and of his regular, often entertaining, and rewarding correspondence with patrons".

Mitchell calls George Biggin (1783), which is one of his earliest known works, "an accomplished full-length portrait in the Gainsborough tradition, [which] should be considered as a milestone in the development of an artist who was entirely self-taught".

He spent decades drawing the scenery there and, according to Mitchell, "[h]is detailed watercolours of iron furnaces, coal staithes, and copper mines foreshadow the work of Joseph Wright of Derby and J. M. W. Turner and constitute an important record of the early industrial developments in that region, but are less well known than his more numerous scenes of folk life and picturesque scenery.

They settled in Ambleside and became friendly with the Lake Poets including William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge who became godfather to their daughter Caroline Bella Ibbetson.

Ibbetson acquired several generous patrons in Liverpool and in Edinburgh: William Roscoe, Sir Henry Nelthorpe, and the Countess of Balcarres.

Benjamin West described Ibbetson as the "Berchem of England" in recognition of his debt to the Dutch 17th century landscape painters.