What’s new
Anyone for cards?
7th July 2022
Adding the inimitable Sylvie Jones’ A Wicked Pack of playing cards completes all the erotic work she produced for the Erotic Print Society in the 1990s. See the whole titillating set now by clicking here.
A gallery of erotism
5th July 2022
Something a little different today – a large portfolio published in Paris in 1935 containing works by nearly fifty artists, all under the category of ‘Erotism’. Erring on the safe side, the collection nevertheless includes many striking images – see them all now by clicking here.
Oh, Walter!
4th July 2022
Another colourful and imaginative erotic portfolio by Louis Berthomme Saint-André today, his 1932 illustrations for My Secret Life by the enigmatic and verbose Victorian sexual explorer ‘Walter’. What didn’t Walter get up to? See the whole series now by clicking here.
Was there ever more explicit erotic poetry?
3rd July 2022
‘Cunt as wide as an estuary/Where my love’s seed often died’ – the French poet Apollinaire was one of the greatest ever erotic writers, and the 1934 illustrations for his collected works by Louis Berthomme Saint-André are just brilliant. See them all now by clicking here.
Home again, home again
2nd July 2022
Home from our hols again, and straight down to a lovely portfolio from the ever-popular Paul-Émile Bécat, his very explicit 1938 illustrations for Une jeune fille à la page. See them all now by clicking here.
Holiday time!
12th June 2022
It’s that time of year again, and Rosie is off on her summer holidays for a couple of weeks. Back in early July – until then you can all spend your time looking at the thousands of lovely pictures you haven’t explored yet! And you can tell all your friends and followers who haven’t found us yet to hotfoot it to honesterotica – they won’t regret it …
Under the skin
11th June 2022
‘I paint for people who are level-headed but who have an unspoken vice deep inside them.’ This is the Swiss-French painter and printmaker Félix Vallatton, today’s new artist, whose brilliant woodcuts capture bourgeois Parisian life at the fin-de-siècle. See his work now by clicking here.
Visualising violation
10th June 2022
Sexual violence is a contentious and difficult topic, but sometimes art is a powerful and cathartic channel for conveying such experience, which is why today’s new portfolios by the German artist Katharina Kranichfeld are worth spending time with. See her work now by clicking here.
Intimacy in black and white
8th June 2022
The stark, powerful monochrome works of the Polish artist Ewelina Kołakowska are today’s new addition to honesterotica. Dark and sensual, see her etchings and paintings now by clicking here.
Something special for monsieur?
6th June 2022
A little rococo amuse-bouche from 1900 today, a portfolio of twenty vignettes of everyday naughtiness as would have been sold to ‘a discriminating gentleman’ visiting the specialist bookshops in the backstreets of Paris. Enjoy them now 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.