What’s new
Holiday explorations
7th September 2021
Fancy a late summer break with young Adèle and Albertine, intent on exploring their sexuality? Then you'll appreciate Paul Avril’s 1905 portfolio of A Summer in the Country, newly added here. Have fun!
Censored and destroyed, but one copy survived
6th September 2021
A pioneering portfolio of erotic prints published in Munich in 1909 is today’s new offering. Featuring daring prints by 12 artists, The Phoenix was instantly banned and very few complete sets have survived. We are fortunate to be able to share it here.
Too explicit to publish …
5th September 2021
It’s not often that we come across new illustrations from one of our favourite artists, Suzanne Ballivet, but today we have added her unpublished – and more explicit – 1943 drawings for Pierre Louÿs’ Bilitis. You too can enjoy them now by clicking here.
Pure pleasure
4th September 2021
An early offering by Otto Schoff is today’s new portfolio. Clearly drawn from life, Martha is a straightforward and honest set of images of a woman exploring her own body. Given that the drawings were made more than a century ago, they have a very modern feel. See them now by clicking here.
Tickling your fancy?
1st September 2021
If you consider yourself a lady and love being ‘tickled’, then you’ll appreciate today’s new portfolio by the prolific late eighteenth century artist Frédillo – The New Ladies’ Tickler, Or, The Adventures of Lady Lovesport and The Audacious Harry. See it now by clicking here.
Rococo fantasies
31st August 2021
Today’s new artist is the Italian Aroldo Bonzagni, whose inventive and colourful talent was cut short by the influenza epidemic of 1918 – plus ça change. His Secret Album, which you can see here, includes some remarkable paintings and pastels.
Transgression in spades
30th August 2021
An important and powerful new artist for you all today, the Uruguayan Javier Gil, who in the late 1990s produced remarkable illustrations for transgressive texts by Sade, Bataille and Duras. No fewer than five portfolios for you to enjoy, see them all here.
Full-on sex …
29th August 2021
Back to 1920s Germany for today’s new artist, Curt Grosspietsch. He made just two portfolios, the second repeating much of the first, but there are some powerful images of wellspring cunts, and of cocks on the rampage – click here to see them. Enjoy!
Simple pleasures
28th August 2021
Rustic delights from the mid-19th century by French artist Victor Adam is today’s new portfolio. So very innocent! See them all here, and remember the simple pleasures of life.
A one-night stand and lots of spanking
26th August 2021
Today’s new illustrator is the talented and versatile French artist Léo Fontan. He didn’t produce much explicitly erotic work, but what he did was very good and well worth knowing. See what you think – his work can be found 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.