What’s new
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.
It’s a gay world!
4th June 2022
What a treat today! We are delighted to bring you the colourful and witty gay world of the great Michael Kirwan, whose talent brought to life the variety of intimate encounter and fired the imagination of his many admirers. See his wonderful work now by clicking here.
Earthly paradises?
3rd June 2022
Ghost-like naked women interacting with their surroundings while they explore their animal impulses – that’s the leitmotif of today’s new artist, the Iranian-Belgian Sanam Khatibi. Tender or brutal, romantic or savage? You decide – see her work now by clicking here.
Some enchanted penis …
31st May 2022
It’s always a pleasure to offer a new portfolio by the French artist Paul-Émile Bécat, and today we’ve added his 1950 plates for the magical love story Tanzaï et Néadarné, which includes Tanzaï’s genitals being turned by a fairy into a milk-strainer. See them all by clicking here.
Spicing up the everyday
29th May 2022
An exciting and provocative new artist for you all today – the Slovakian-American Katarina Janečková Walshe with her exuberant explorations of domestic sexuality, not to mention the ever-present bears! See her thought-provoking work now by clicking here.
Gay excess!
28th May 2022
Male component size and quantity of product are key features of the distinctive pencil art of the gay artist known only as Joseph, today’s new addition @honesterotica. See his copious work now by clicking here and ponder on the real meaning of hyperspermia!
Sweetly profound orientalism
27th May 2022
Today’s illustrations for a new edition of Franz Toussaint’s translations of prose poems from the Arabic, The Garden of Caresses, was Mariette Lydis’s last book commission. Warning: mild eroticism, children and animals :-) 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.