What’s new
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.
The innocent mid-1950s
1st August 2021
Head for Anon 1950s today, where there are three new portfolios, two by the same artist as Ambre la précoce (Moineau de Paris and Les débordements de Michou), and a charming colourful series called L’amour à plusieurs – enough love for everyone! Click here and explore …
Maurice de Becque
31st July 2021
Today’s new artist is Maurice de Becque, a highly-talented engraver and illustrator, who took enormous pains to produce highly-detailed work. Take your time to explore his wonderful portfolios here.
Coming of age
30th July 2021
A rather strange and rare oddity of clandestine 1950s publishing today, the set-piece semi-photographic images from a text about the exploits of a group of proto-teenagers. See Ambre la Précoce now by clicking here. Was it like this for you?
The happy life
30th July 2021
An important new artist today – Henry Monnier, the French equivalent of Cruikshank and Rowlandson, working in the 1820s on delicately-coloured engravings showing that sexual exploration was just as much on people’s minds then as now. Enjoy his work by clicking here.
Kitsch or cool?
26th July 2021
Some people like his work, others think he’s just borderline-porn kitsch. We tend towards the latter, but the jury is out, and we’ve just added three more portfolios for Édouard Chimot which you can see here. Let us know what you think.
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.