During the 1870s, after having been a free pupil of the painter Jean-Léon Gérôme, Mesplès drew caricatures intended for periodicals such as Le Monde illustré, which were light and sometimes naughty.

In the meantime, he fell in love with opera dancers and stage costumes: in the early 1880s, he produced his first album of Danses de Paris, a series of drawings engraved by himself, in etching.

Mesplès also took part, with Charles Bianchini, in the design of costumes for various show scenes: for Monsieur Scapin by Jean Richepin at the Comédie-Française (1886), and L'Année joyeuse, a revue by Armand Numès and Édouard Hermil, at the Cluny Theater (1889).

He became a figure of the Montmartre artistic scene, illustrating the escapades of the Bal des Quat'z'Arts and frequenting the entourage of Jules Lévy, founder of the Incoherents art movement.

A few months earlier, he had made the front page of Comœdia, talking with Maurice Hamel, who recalled that before the war Mesplès was called le peintre des danseuses ("the painter of dancers").