What’s new
Sapphic delights
19th September 2024
Pierre Louÿs’ classic lesbian fantasy about the Greek courtesan Bilitis has been illustrated many times, and today we bring you the stylish 1946 interpretation of Jean Berque, with a cast of naked lovers in a hot Mediterranean setting. See them all now by clicking here.
How grotesque
15th September 2024
Today’s new addition is the British artist Paul Rumsey, with his trademark dark charcoal drawings in the erotic grotesque tradition of Rowlandson, Goya and Rops. Witty and barbed, see them all now by clicking here (and look out for the Republican Arseholes at the end!),
Obviously Ovid
13th September 2024
We stay with Ovid’s famous Art of Loving with today’s new artist. the Italian Federico Righi, and his beautifully stylish prints to accompany this classic ‘sex manual’, written more than two thousand years ago. See the whole portfolio now by clicking here.
Ars Amatoria
11th September 2024
Ovid’s famous ‘advice manual’ The Art of Loving, or L’art d’amour, has been illustrated by many artists, and today we have the pleasure of bringing you the colourful portfolio by the wonderful Milivoj Uzelac. You can see them all by clicking here.
Vive le godemichet!
1st September 2024
The French word for dildo is godemichet, and today’s new portfolio is French illustrator Jean Reschofsky’s 1948 drawings for a volume of anonymous poems celebrating this important source of sexual pleasure. See them all now by clicking here.
Quelle horreur!
28th August 2024
Today we bring you the work of Angelo di Marco, aka Arcor, one of France’s best-known illustrators and cartoonists. As well as his complete Doctor Sex series and Eva: Birth of a Star, we have a great collection of his finely-imagined ‘horror’ illustrations – lots to enjoy now by clicking here.
Pretty Sauvage …
26th August 2024
Two new portfolios today from one of our favourite illustrators, Sylvain Sauvage – his 1922 plates for Imirce, Daughter of Nature, and his colourful 1929 series for Le Bon Plaisir. Both erotic in Sauvage’s original trademark style, see them now by clicking here.
Come up and see my etchings …
23rd August 2024
Today’s new artist is the Ukrainian Vasyl Fenchak, whose detailed and carefully composed prints draw on a wide range of classical and ancient stories, combining powerful symbolism with rich background textures. Subjects with an erotic dimension – Leda and the Swan, Ariadne, Calypso, The Judgement of Paris, Susanna and the Elders – are among his favourites. See Fenchak’s wonderful work now by clicking here.
Raw self-reflection
21st August 2024
Today we bring you the work of the Austrian artist Franz Ringel, who wrote of his powerful art ‘I have tried to free myself, but I cannot. The more I paint, the more I paint myself.’ See his paintings of raw, colourful, stylised sexual bodies now by clicking here.
Blue Sky?
13th August 2024
So … X (Twitter) is the main way that our 13K+ X followers know about new content on the honesterotica website, but like so many others we are very concerned about the direction that Elon Musk – ever more reactionary and unhinged – is taking the platform. Rosie hates the divisive and anti-libertarian stance of one of the world’s richest male chauvinists. So we’ve taken a first step towards opening up a new channel, on the decentralised open-access platform Bluesky – you can find us on Bluesky here. It hasn’t been plain sailing – so far we haven’t worked out how to include images in posts, but we will persevere, and will post all new posts to both platforms. If you’re also exploring social platform options, join us on Bluesky and we’ll see what happens.
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.