What’s new
Firkin hell!
29th April 2025
What a treat for you all today – two complete graphic versions, Lady Chatterley and Casanova, plus a selection of his (in)famous and hilarious Firkin cat cartoons, from one of the very best of British comic artists, Hunt Emerson. See everything now by clicking here.
Completely OTT
27th April 2025
Thanks to the kind generosity of one of our collector followers, we can now for the first time bring you all eighteen prints from the 1936 portfolio Variations Amoureuse, which we believe to be by Gaston Hoffman. Over the top, yes, very! See them all by clicking here.
Reclaiming the erotic
25th April 2025
A distinctive blend of accomplished technique, eroticism, and emotional complexity, that’s today’s new artist, Lisa Yuskavage. She uses the tropes of pin-up art and softcore imagery to critique those conventions in her paintings, which you can explore by clicking here.
Orgy!
23rd April 2025
Writhing piles of interpenetration, mountains of copulation, countless couplings, bacchanalia central – Walter Battiss’s idea of Fook Island heaven. See this freedom-loving South African artist’s work now – he’s today’s new addition – by clicking here.
Technicolour flesh …
21st April 2025
Elizabeth Glaessner’s paintings are bold and powerful, with a constant theme of surreal entwined bodies and limbs, but are they in the slightest degree erotic? We think so, how about you? See her work now by clicking here.
Tied up in knots
19th April 2025
Shoji Oki is one of the most talented and imaginative of late twentieth century erotic shunga artists, specialising in the specifically Japanese form of bondage known as shibari or kinbaku. He’s today’s new artist, and you can see his work now by clicking here.
The limit of limits?
17th April 2025
The sado-masochistic work of Joseph Farrel probably raises more issues about including him in an ‘honest erotica’ resource than almost any other artist, and it is not without misgivings that we have chosen to include him. Let us know what you think. You’ll find our collection of Farrel’s work by clicking here.
Dark
14th April 2025
There’s only one word to describe the work of today’s new artist, Raphaël Freida – dark. Maybe it was in his nature, maybe his experiences in the first world war, but his choice of subject – oppression, betrayal, torture – is very powerful. See it now by clicking here.
One for the books
12th April 2025
More wonderfully erotic bookplates today from our new artist Elfriede Weidenhaus, whose speciality was naked lovers with goat-gods and unicorns. See her ex libris – and more – now by clicking here.
Mysterious motivations
10th April 2025
If you were to ask today’s new artist, David Shanahan, who the people in his erotic paintings are and their motives, he’d say he has no idea other than they’re in a frozen moment, suspended in time before something actually happens. Judge for yourself by clicking here.
Important recent updates
✨ Illustrator and portfolio lists
One of the most common requests we get (and the responses to the recent questionnaire confirm this) is that it would be really useful to have complete listings of all the artists and portfolios on the website – as of May 2026 728 artists and 2,003 portfolios!
So we’ve listened and heard … and by following this link you will find files with these listings in alphabetical order (and where there are several portfolios with the same name their artists will be in order too). The lists are in PDF format, so you can download, save and search them. They duplicate what you can already find in the artist and portfolio listings on the website, but if you’re really into erotic art and illustration and would like a quick ready reference, you should find these invaluable. Enjoy!
✨ Helping you to find your way around
You asked for it, we’ve done it – all the artists on the site now have a set of ‘Similar artists’ links at the end of their biography, so whether it’s bookplate artists, spanking artists, gay artists, whatever, you can cruise easily from artist to similar artist. Have fun!
✨ Hans-Jürgen Döpp, 1940–2025
Few people have shared their wisdom, experience – and wonderful collection of erotic art – more than Hans-Jürgen Döpp, who sadly died last year at the age of 84. For more than half a century Hans-Jürgen devoted himself to the study and collection of erotic art, not as a marginal curiosity or a private indulgence, but as an essential part of human culture. Through his work as a scholar, teacher, curator, author and collector, he helped establish erotic art as a serious field of artistic and historical enquiry. He was an enthusiastic supporter of honesterotica, sharing more than 200 of his portfolios with us, helping to make the website a unique resource of erotic art that would otherwise have been lost to the world. Read our tribute to Hans-Jürgen here.
✨ The difficult mirror
Artists, childhood, and the challenge of looking
At a time of growing concern about online child safety, we are very aware of how we handle the sensitive subject of depictions of children in art, especially ‘erotic art’. We have added an important Themes and Topics article here, which helps explore how artists over time have depicted naked children, and why it is as important to think seriously about what art is for and how we look at and experience it as about what is actually being depicted. Read the piece and see what you think.