What’s new
The joys of marriage
21st March 2026
What do you think of marriage? A celebration of true lasting love or a lifelong penance? Have a look at our new 1947 portfolio by Jean Traynier illustrating the medieval satire The Fifteen Joys of Marriage, arguably the artist’s best erotic work. Click here and see if it helps you make up your mind …
A gay life
19th March 2026
Among collectors of homoerotic art from the 1950s, one artist stands out, the troubled, talented and imaginative René Bolliger, who is today’s new artist. Take your time with each of his portfolios – Narcisse, Jésus-la-Caille, Tiresias, Querelle de Brest – by clicking here.
Skin in the game
16th March 2026
Today’s new artist, Stephen Early, is known for his unapologetically erotic, classically grounded depictions of the naked body. His paintings affirm that queer eroticism can be thought-provoking and tender without surrendering its power to arouse or to unsettle. See his work now by clicking here.
Oh the joy!
14th March 2026
Today’s new artist, John Raynes, is best known as a Cornish landscape painter and author of books on figure drawing, but in the 1990s he also created illustrations for two important sex manuals, The New Joy of Sex and The Good Sex Book. You can now see them all now by clicking here and remember how exciting pre-internet sex seemed!
The absent image: where has lesbian intimacy gone?
11th March 2026
In 1925 the Danish artist Gerda Wegener, now living in Paris, created a series of twelve coloured pochoir plates titled Les délassements de l’Éros (The Amusements of Eros), created in collaboration with Louis Perceau, a French poet and connoisseur of erotica. The plates depict women in close,… read more
Undies
11th March 2026
Something light and frilly for you all today, Jean Dulac’s 1956 illustrations for a romp through the history of women’s underwear in the previous half century. See Les Dessous du Demi-siècle now by clicking here, and enjoy those fantasies!
Shock and awe
8th March 2026
Erotic art doesn’t come much more transgressive than that of today’s new artist, Antoine Bernhart. Darkness and danger are the backdrops to his work – don’t go there unless you’re fearless and ready to question his motives – see his work by clicking here for his biography, and here for his portfolio.
Sexperimentation
6th March 2026
It’s always a pleasure to share a new portfolio by one of our favourite French illustrators, and today we bring you Berthomme Saint-André’s 1943 illustrations for La nuit et le moment, Crébillon’s eighteenth century sexual initiation romp. See them all now by clicking here.
Holy orders
4th March 2026
Today’s new artist is the Belgian Edgard Tytgat, whose naked figures present sexuality as a routine human fact quietly disrupting social etiquette, often producing a sense of polite embarrassment. See Tytgat’s work by clicking here, and don’t miss his fascinating pictorial narrative of women visiting a monastery 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.