What’s new
Dreams or nightmares?
16th November 2021
The prolific and thought-provoking Canadian artist Claude Bolduc is today’s new artist, with his disturbing paintings and drawings in which strange beings interact in a sensual and vivid dreamlike reverie. Not to everyone’s taste – see his work here and make your up own mind.
Sharing Paradise
15th November 2021
If you’ve wondered what the Garden of Eden was really like, wonder no longer. Today’s imaginative new portfolio from 1910 proves Eve and Adam were having a great time experimenting with each other and the rest of creation – including the dinosaurs! Share their exploration by clicking here.
AirB&B with a difference!
13th November 2021
Fancy a house party with an erotic edge in a French château? Then you’ll love our new anonymous 1930s portfolio which you’ll find here, with fun and games for the whole extended family. Now go plan your own!
Sexual revolution 1848 style
12th November 2021
1848 was a year of revolution across Europe, and one anonymous German artist explored the ways in which political upheaval might also extend to the sexual realm. You can see the imaginative results in today’s new portfolio, Ausbrüche, by clicking here.
Beyond bawdy
11th November 2021
The French have a particularly Gallic tradition of rude songs, ‘Chansons de salle de garde’ (roughly ‘Waiting Room Songs’), and nobody has produced a better set of illustrations for them than today’s new artist, Paul-François Morvan. See them all now by clicking here.
Ten aspects of pleasure …
10th November 2021
A wonderful, colourful, and highly original new portfolio today from the French artist André Lambert, his Ten Pleasing Subjects. Hard to believe that these were created more than a century ago. See all of them now by clicking here.
Bele’s fun and games
9th November 2021
One of the most important German post-war surrealist illustrators, the inventive and playful Bele Bachem is today’s new art artist at honesterotica. See her wonderful Rosewater and Arabian Nights illustrations here and have your imagination tickled!
The ultimate Fanny Hill
8th November 2021
John Cleland’s Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure, better known as Fanny Hill, is a classic of erotic literature, and nobody created better illustrations for it than Zevi Blum, today’s new artist. Wit abounds in his detailed drawings, which you can see here.
The joy of naked!
7th November 2021
The French artist Lucien Métivet is best known for his innovative Belle Époque theatre posters, but he also illustrated a couple of erotic classics, Roi Pausole and Chansons de Bilitis. He’s today’s new illustrator, and you can see all his work here. Enjoy!
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.