Born in Vienna, Peter Johann Nepomuk Geiger wanted to follow the family tradition and become a sculptor, but drawing and painting were his natural element, a talent which was recognised early by the Austrian royal family and their circle. He illustrated Anton Ziegler’s Vaterländischen Immortellen (Immortals of our Native Land) of 1839, together with numerous illustrations of historical works and poetry. In 1853 he became a professor at the Viennese Academy of Art.

As with the erotic art of Peter Fendi elsewhere on this site, there are doubts as to whether a court painter would also have dabbled in erotic art, but the publisher of Zehn Erotische Aquarelle in 1909 believed they were genuine, and the series of original watercolours on the same theme attributed to him seem to support their authenticity. Geiger certainly had the skills required to produce such work, and probably the imagination too.

Similar artists

Achille Devéria – French romantic lithographer of erotic and amorous subjects in the same period.
Peter Fendi – Austrian court painter, the other possible artist of Geiger's disputed erotica.
Jean-Jacques Grandville – French romantic caricaturist of satirical, fantastical anthropomorphic illustration.
Eugène Lepoittevin – French romantic illustrator of comic-erotic lithography of the 1820s and 30s.
Mihály Zichy – Hungarian court painter with similarly disputed, privately circulated erotic drawings.