What’s new
Yes – more Sardax!
15th August 2021
We had an enormously positive response from adding Sardax’s artwork to the site; now we can add to your pleasure with all the illustrations from his landmark, now almost impossible to find, 2006 The Art of Sardax. See all 78 wonderful images here. Enjoy!
Love à la Bécat
12th August 2021
Two new portfolios today from Paul-Émile Bécat, both illustrating novels by René Boylesve, but from opposite ends of Bécat’s career – the perfume of love on an Italian lake and the lovely Ninon learning her lessons in a park. That makes forty Bécat portfolios on the site! Enough yet?
The wonders of sex
11th August 2021
Today we have a fascinating insight into Eric Gill’s 1920s explorations into the art and mechanics of sex through his sketchbooks, conveniently hidden until after his death – see some of his wonderings and imaginings now by clicking here.
A portfolio named Desire
10th August 2021
A passionate, varied – and very red! – portfolio called Desire from today’s new artist, the Hungarian Istvan Prihoda. They’re enjoying themselves, we hope you do too. See his colourful paintings now by clicking here.
Classic Székely
9th August 2021
Good morning all you Székely lovers! No fewer than three new Alex Székely portfolios for you today – Mythologies, Gulliver, and the colourful pastel sequence Poème d’automne, which is here. What a treat!
Ultimate sexual freedom?
8th August 2021
Today’s new artist is Eberhard Schlotter, and his dark painterly engravings for Sade’s Philosophy in the Boudoir, a tale of libertine adventure where anything and everything sexual is permissible. See Schlotter’s work now by clicking here.
Woman to woman
7th August 2021
With a little help from our friends, we’ve managed to complete the portfolios for May den Engelsen, powerful images of lesbian intimacy from the 1920s. See them all now here. A woman ahead of her time.
Sex and death
6th August 2021
Today we have added three important portfolios for the French surrealist André Masson, including his powerful engravings for his close friend Georges Bataille’s famous transgressive stories Histoire de l’oeil (Story of the Eye) and Le mort (The Dead Man). They can be seen here. Be moved …
A little French dressing?
5th August 2021
Two new portfolios today from the stylish French illustrator Sylvain Sauvage – the Parisian demi-monde of a young man’s experiences of Parisian hotels, which you can see here, and Love Lessons in a Park, which are here. Lose yourself in an erotic French setting!
The one and only Sardax
4th August 2021
The one so many of you have been waiting for, considered by many to be the world’s best-known contemporary illustrators of female dominance. Yes, Sardax comes to honesterotica, with many great examples of his work – see them all 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.