What’s new
City underworld
25th August 2026
Jeanne Mammen, today’s new artist, was one of the most distinctive chroniclers of the German Weimar period, capturing Berlin life with engaged intimacy. Her 1932 interpretation of Pierre Louÿ’s Songs of Bilitis is both modern and intimate. Read about Mammen by clicking here, and about her Bilitis portfolio here.
Literary inspiration
23rd August 2026
Picart Le Doux, today’s new artist, was known for his paintings of naked women, portrayed with direct and dazzling frankness. We have two portfolios, both inspired by literary texts, and demonstrating the breadth of his talent. See Le Doux’s work now by clicking here.
The human comedy
21st August 2026
André Collot is one of our favourite artists, and today we bring you his 1934 illustrations for Honoré de Balzac’s Contes Drolatiques or Humorous Tales. From The Venial Sin to The Succubus and Despair in Love, you can see them all now by clicking here.
Female friends
18th August 2026
Today’s new artist is Paul Colin, celebrated for his dynamic Parisian interwar art deco posters. He only ever created one erotic portfolio, in 1947 creating a series of etchings for Paul Verlaine’s poems about women. Read all about him here, and see the whole portfolio here.
Love without end
12th August 2026
Jacques Cortellari, today’s new illustrator, only produced one erotic portfolio, for Charles Nodier’s autobiographical novel Aglaé. Though drawn in 1969, they hark back to the 1803 origin of the text – you can read about the artist by clicking here, and see the whole portfolio here.
Erotic expressed, erotic suppressed
10th August 2026
Today’s new artist is the German ‘new realist’ Max Beckmann, exiled to America after being branded a cultural Bolshevik by the Nazis. His paintings teem with bodies, pressed together, tangled, displayed, the erotic charge rarely far from the surface. Read all about Beckmann here, and see his colourful and imaginative work by clicking here.
Secret places
8th August 2026
More ‘hidden jewels’ today, this time from Sylvain Sauvage in 1923 – the Diderot tale about those parts of a woman’s anatomy that can speak only the truth. Read all about Sultan Mangogul, his favourite concubine Mirzoza, and the magic ring now by clicking here.
What Julie did next
5th August 2026
Les égaremens de Julie (Julie’s Distractions) is more noteworthy for its lively 1950 illustrations by Gaston de Sainte-Croix than for its rather uninspired ‘memoires’ of a young eighteenth-century woman exploring the pleasures of the flesh. See the whole portfolio now by clicking here
Swan song
4th August 2026
Today’s new artist is the French illustrator Régis Manset, and his 1940s contributions to Alfred Musset’s Confessions, and his own version of Leda and the Swan – a strange and possibly rather uncomfortable coupling! See Manset’s work now by clicking here.
Love is all you need
1st August 2026
You can’t have spent much time on the site and not come across our most prolific artist, Paul-Émile Bécat. Today we’ve added a 67th Bécat portfolio, Ronsard’s Les Amours from 1950, which may complete our collection of all his erotic commissions! See all the etchings from Les Amours 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.