Spring scene by Hosoda Eishi (c1790)

Time for some more al fresco sex with this painting by the Japanese artist Hosoda Eishi (1756-1829). Most Japanese erotic art was in the form of woodblock prints and actual paintings, such as this, are rarer. The ability to use more subtle shading gives them a particular delicacy, however. Eishi, unusually for an artist at the time, was an aristocratic Samurai, as is his male protagonist here. The woman, however, is wearing a maid's clothing. This picture is from a set of twelve paintings of lovers, depicted at different times of the year. The river in the background is the Sumida in Edo (now known as Tokyo). On the right, on the far bank, can be seen the gateway to the Mimeguri shrine which is still there today. This area, at the time of the painting was a popular place to look at flowers. 

Here we have the view from close to the river, looking towards the Mimeguri shrine, today. You can just glimpse the pale ochre-coloured Sumida river on the left hand side of the photograph at the chest height of the man in a blue jacket Today, technically, despite the urbanisation of Tokyo, you could still have al fresco sex on this spot as it is the site of Kuntsu Sumida Park, a narrow open space which follows the river bank for just under a mile. The shrine is no longer visible from the spot across the river as the view is blocked by the elevated Metropolitan Expressway 6, which runs between it and the river bank.

Watery frolics in the style of Peter Fendi

Here is a group of paintings which were thought, for many years, to be by Austrian artist Peter Fendi (1796-1842).   Fendi was a pioneer in colour printing and also designed a number of banknotes for the Austrian government in 1841.  

These pictures (part of a set of forty) were not published until 1910, however, which makes their provenance as being by Fendi doubtful.  Fendi didn't produce so much as a nude so it would be surprising if these were indeed by him.  Nevertheless, some still maintain that they are his work.

Whoever did them, they have a sprightly joy about them, as groups of ladies and a couple of very excited (but faceless) gentlemen disport themselves in the water in a very tidy landscape.  

The other prints from this set are all depicted as being indoors and feature equally athletic and and joyfully unrealistic figures.  We will look at them another time.

I Modi 1: Angélique et Médor after Agostino Carracci and Giulio Romano

Back through the centuries for this piece of al fresco reverse cowgirl (as it would not have been called at the time!) action.  In a sylvan landscape a lady guides her lover's erection into her vagina while her companion gazes at it raptly.  We confess that this is still a sight that fills us with delight even after  nearly forty years!  No scrabbling around on the grass for this couple as they have a luxurious looking cushion and a large piece of fabric on which to disport themselves.

Marcantonio Raimondi

This picture has a rather convoluted history.  It is one of  a series of erotic engravings of sexual positions produced in book form under the title I Modi by Marcantonio Raimondi (1480-1534) in 1524.  An engraver, he based his pictures on a series of paintings produced by Giulio Romano (1499-1546) for the Duke of Mantua, Federico II Gonzago's new palazzo in Mantua.  Romano was unaware that Raimondi had used his paintings as the basis for his engravings until Raimondi was imprisoned by Pope Clement VII for producing them.  The  Pope ordered all copies of the books to be destroyed.  Romano escaped imprisonment as his paintings were a private commission and were not, unlike Raimondi's book, for public consumption.   

Pietro Aretino by Titian

The poet and author Pietro Aretino (1492-1556), after going to see Romano's originals, then composed sixteen erotic sonnets to accompany the pictures and he also helped get Raimondo released from prison.  A second edition of I modi was then published in 1527 which included Raimondi's illustrations and Aretino's sonnets, in the first known example of erotic pictures and text being included in one publication.

Apart from a few fragments in the British Museum, the 1527 edition is lost, although Aretino's sonnets survived.  Later Agostino Carracci (1557-1602) reconstructed the illustrations (he must have had access to at least a partial copy at that time, as his illustrations are very close to the British Museum fragments).  In 1798 another edition of I Modi was published in Paris with Carracci's engravings reworked by the French artist Jacques Joseph Coiny (1761-1809).  These are the illustrations we have today.

Angélique et Médor byToussaint Dubreuil (1561-1602)

The story of Angélique et Médor (all the illustrations in I Modi were of famous lovers of myth and history) comes from Orlando Furioso by Ludovico Ariosto (1477-1533).  Based on the much older Song of Roland (Roland and Orlando are the same person) it tells the story of Orlando's love for the pagan princess, Angélique who he married.  However, she began a passionate affair with the Saracen called Médor.   

Angélique et Médor by François Boucher (1763)

He carved her name into the bark of a tree but Orlando discovered it (you can just see his figure at the right of the engraving at the top of the post).  It was her betrayal that made him furioso.  Perhaps Roland, who as a Paladin of Charlemagne is a sort of French equivalent of Lancelot of King Arthur's round table, was boring in bed and didn't indulge in athletic al fresco girl on top bonking. Orlando carved the inscription off the tree and imprisoned his wife in a tower.   However, she told Orlando that he couldn't carve away her love for Médor and eventually Angélique killed herself, in a typical end for the sexually aggressive woman in European literature.

Angélique et Médor by Bartholomeus Spranger (1580)

The story of Angélique et Médor is not so well known today but during the renaissance and after the story of the lovers was an inspiration to a number of artists, although none display the graphic eroticism that Giulio Romano's lost painting would have had, given the engravings based upon it.

Two Reflected Ladies: French Postcards by Grundworth

Bob Guccione, in many of the pictorials he shot for Penthouse, often used mirrors in his pictorials. Proving that there is nothing new in photographic erotica here are some studies from a series produced by the French postcard studio Grundworth. 

 Like most of these postcard publishing outfits of the time, little is known about it, as, despite the widespread circulation of these cards (which were certainly tolerated amongst troops during the Great War) their production and distribution was illegal in France, hence the requirement for anonymity.

Grundworth produced erotic postcards from the 1890s to the 1930s.  Given the time span and a number of different styles the name is unlikely to represent an individual photographer but more likely a group of photographers who were, perhaps better known, but wanted to hide their real identities.  Grundworth cards were very collectable and are even more so today.  You can expect to pay from £75 to £150 each for these little treasures.

These photographs are often dated at 1935 but the gartered stockings probably indicate a slightly earlier date in the twenties, however.  These pictures are also sometimes known as ''women on a chaise longue' but the width of the piece of furniture is more likely to indicate some form of divan or other bed.

The Victory of Faith by St George Hare

The Victory of Faith (1890)

This gently sensual picture actually has a religious theme and depicts two Christian women imprisoned in a Roman amphitheatre, while barely visible lions glower through the bars in the background.  The white girl is tied to a stone pillar on which a cross has been scratched. The dark skinned woman is supposed to be her Ethiopian maid, with them both being due to be thrown to the lions the next day.

The Gilded Cage (1908)

Hare (1857-1933) was an Irish painter who produced a number of pictures of chained women for religiously uplifting paintings.  This picture was well received at the time and is now on display in the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne to where it was donated in 1905.  Their tender touching of each other may be intended to depict their shared faith but now it seems likely that Hare copied the pose from a French erotic postcard which explains the simmering sexual overtones!  

Symbolic Dance by Jan Ciągliński

Symbolic Dance (1898)

Here is a lovely and seductive  painting by the Polish painter Jan Ciągliński (1858-1913).  Although born in Poland he spent most of his career, other than a brief time in Paris. based in St Petersburg, Russia.  In his will, however, he bequeathed most of his works to Poland and many of them were on exhibition in Warsaw over the last few months. 

At the toilet (1909)

Symbolic Dance was painted in 1896 and is a frank portrait of two women, giving a real sense of two models  captured in the studio.  He produced a number of nudes and all have the same understated sensuality about them.

Kiss of the sun (1907)

He visited North Africa and the Middle East and painted a number of orientalist pictures, of the realistic, rather than the harem fantasy, type.  He taught at the Imperial Academy in St Petersburg and became a professor there in 1911. teaching many well known Russian painters.

The supportive tree - Persian couple

Many years ago I had a girlfriend who was an air hostess (as they were then called) for a Middle Eastern airline and she had several friends from Iran Air.  Goodness me, those Iranian ladies were lovely!  Today's Iran, of course, is what used to be known as Persia.

Here is the first example of Persian erotic art I have posted, in this anonymous but charming painting, done sometime in the nineteenth century, of a gentleman taking his lady from behind and, indeed, from his angle of attack, up the arse.  Now Triple P, of course, favours the rear entry position, more often than not (to the extent that a former girlfriend moaned that most people considered her bust her best feature but Triple P never bothered to look at it) but the standing up position does require some adjustment as regards angle of attack, especially if the lady is petite. In this position, having something for the lady to brace against is useful as it enables her to present her rear end in a more accessible way.  This lady has found a perfect young tree for the purpose (although we question, from a horticultural point of view, a tree with such a thick trunk but small upper branches).

My first lady against a tree came (so to speak) about twenty years ago with our particular friend S, from Vancouver.  We were attending an insurance conference at the splendid Banff Springs Hotel in Alberta and after the conference dinner decided to walk back via a small detour into the woods (S wanted to see the Bow Falls in the moonlight, or some such).  S needed to relieve herself and claimed she couldn't wait the few minutes it would take to get back to our room (actually she just enjoys doing it outside, if the truth be told) so we stepped a few yards into the trees.  Both of us then feeling more relaxed she suggested that I then "take her against the tree" (I suspect she used a rather more vulgar word).  So, with her suitably braced on the trunk (arms out in front of her, evening dress up around her hips), I did. Treemendous!

Ménage à trois by French School

Here is a lady entertaining two gentleman or two gentlemen entertaining a lady, depending on your viewpoint, in an anonymous painting of the French School from the eighteenth century.  While being taken from the rear the lady contemplates the other man's erection.  The scene, especially given the man on the right's posture, is rather languid and gives the impression of the enjoyment of some hours of ongoing frolics, rather than a single frantic scene.  He is holding what looks like a pearl necklace.  Is it a gift, a reward or a payment?

Following the death of Louis XIV in 1715, France (or at least Paris - Louis XIV's palace of Versailles was closed down for a number of years ), under the regency of the Duc d'Orléans and then Louis XV, saw a period of libertarianism embodied by the rocaille style of art as practised by Watteau and Boucher.  There were less pompous historical scenes than in the previous baroque style and more frivolous subjects and nudes.

A graphic, fully-rendered, erotic painting such as this was unusual, with most sexual pictures being confined to engravings and drawings.  The artist doesn't have the talent of a Watteau, Boucher or, later, Fragonard but it is a nicely composed scene of  the sort of sexual frolic that the period became notorious for.

Lesbian shunga: Women using a dildo by Chōkyōsai Eiri (1801)

Back in 2013 the  British Museum ran a splendid exhibition called Shunga sex and pleasure in Japanese art, which featured the largest selection of Japanese erotic pictures seen on display in Britain to date.  Given what often looks like a concerted effort by parts of society in Britain at present to increasingly follow America's conservative views, rather than more liberal, continental Europe's, on erotic material it was good to see the British Museum taking this on in such a serious way. 

This picture of a woman about to try out a tie-on dildo on her companion is by Chōkyōsai Eiri, who was active for less than a decade around the turn of the eighteenth to nineteenth centiries.  This picture is one of thirteen from his only known printed erotic work Fumi no kiyogaki from around 1801.  He seemed to mainly specialise in portraits of beauties.

The woman with the dildo holds a container of cream and is saying "As we're going to do it like this I'll put lots of cream on it, so really make yourself come." She says that the cream is needed as the dildo is such a big one.  The other girl has her hand on the dildo and is telling her to stick it in quickly as she wants to come five or six times.  Given its depiction as black, the dildo was probably made of ebony.  Wooden dildos were known as mokuzō but buffalo horn and tortoiseshell ones were common as well.

It's interesting to note that these women aren't lesbians in a relationship but are probably ladies in waiting in a samurai's home, so given the harem-like, women only environment they are just having sex to provide sexual relief rather than because they are in a romantic relationship.  These tie- on dildos could also be attached to a woman's ankle for solo masturbation.

Lesbian Lovers by Paul Avril

 Here is a rather sweet illustration, from French artist Paul Avril, of two young ladies enjoying each other's company.  Perhaps they are scared of the stormy weather, given there is a rather violent flash of lightning and an ominous looking sky outside, and are comforting each other.  Beautiful work on the drapery.

Avril was born Édouard-Henri Avril in Algiers in 1849. He studied at the École des Beaux Arts in Paris in the eighteen seventies.  He illustrated both conventional novels and what the French called galante literature which were privately published erotic novels.  He died in 1928.

This example comes from a 1909 edition of just 310 copies of the 1741 novel Histoire du Saturnin Portier du Chartreux by Gervaise de Latouche, which is a story about illicit love between monks and nuns.  According to the original caption, the lady on the right  is feeling "her pleasure mount by degrees".

Avril was one of the greatest erotic illustrators of all time and I will feature more of his work soon.

The two friends by Manuel Robbe

We have just posted some gently sensual images by French painter and printmaker, Manuel Robbe (1872-1936), over on our Venus Observations blog.  Here are a couple more overtly erotic works by him. Both called Les deux amies they are quite explicit illustrations of lesbians.  In the top picture one girl caresses her friend's sex while she looks at the viewer making him (or her) a voyeur to the scene.  The blurring around the girl on the right's hand may well be a deliberate attempt to suggest frantic movement.

The second picture has the first one kissing her friend's groin.  Both are very nice illustrations although the bottom one is more finished and lacks the loose spontaneity of the top one.  The girls in this one seem to be getting through quite a lot of Champagne!

Bons Souvenirs by Zichy

It's always difficult to propose that any one individual is pre-eminent in his or her particular area of expertise, as there are always a number of other claimants who could validly be considered for the premier position.  In the field of erotic art, however, Agent Triple P would venture that you would be hard put to nominate a name to go up against Hungarian artist Mihály Zichy (1827-1906).  A conventional painter and illustrator as well, his erotic pictures demonstrate a sense of movement, brilliant draftsmanship and sexual passion very rarely displayed in other erotic genre works.  

We'll have more of his pictures another day but just wanted to post this splendidly passionate (and athletic!) example as a taster.

The Innocent Nymph or Le Retour du Poilu by Georges Léonnec

This illustration appeared in French magazine La Vie Parisienne after the end of the Great War, in May 1919.  It shows the God Pan playing his pipes to an imploring nymph.  Poilu means hairy one, which can well apply to Pan but was also the nickname of French infantry troops during the war.  Looking a bit more closely, you can see the folded horizon bleu uniform and characteristic French Adrian helmet. The Nymph is saying, in the text which was under the picture,  "Play me, I beg you, a tango tune!" Does the fact that she is dubbed 'an innocent nymph' say anything about the fate of young girls welcoming back their now battle-worn men?  Transformed, perhaps into something rather different to that which they were when they left home.  Something dangerous and less gentlemanly to innocent young women...

Georges Léonnec (1881-1940) served in the war himself before returning to Paris to illustrate magazines like La Vie Parisienne, Le Sourire and Fantasio.

Lovers by Jean-François Millet

Pair of lovers

 In some ways it is something of a surprise to discover that the French realist painter Jean-François Millet (1814-1874) produced erotic works. His pictures of peasants toiling in the landscape are far from the passion exhibited in the two drawings here but, then again, if he saw sex as a natural part, and perhaps a brief escape from, the hard life of the peasant (such as his parents) then perhaps it is not such a surprise after all. The pencil drawing above, which is the the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts in Budapest is a passionate depiction of rear entry sex which may be designed to echo the ways of the animals in the fields over which Millet walked, collecting material for his paintings. The girl has a wonderfully ecstatic expression and her arm disappears between her legs, surely reaching for her lover's member. 

Nymph and satyr 

This is another pencil drawing showing a nymph performing fellatio on a goat legged satyr or even, as some would have it, the devil. One of Millet's friends was Honoré Daumier whose ability to draw figures was much admired by Millet who copied his approach to figure work. Daumier produced his own erotic works and it would be interesting to know if the two artists shared their erotic works with each other.

Kissing ladies from the nineteenth century

Here is a delicious picture of two kissing women from the late nineteenth century. They have something of Daisy and Edith, from my erotic story The Lust World, about them! The standing girl is a voluptuous lovely indeed! What a splendid posterior!  I have no exact date for this picture but these striped stockings were very popular in the 1890s.  Almost certainly French.  Gorgeous!

Illustrations from Le Livre de la Marquise by Konstantin Somov (1869-1939)

Konstantin Somov was one of Russia's greatest painters, equally at home with portraits, illustrations and landscapes.  His landscape, The Rainbow (1927) set the record for the price at auction for a piece of Russian art when it was sold in 2007 for $7.33 million.

He was a founder member of the Mir Iskusstva (World of Art) movement along with the likes of Leon Bakst.  Set up in 1898, the following year they published a magazine with the same name.

Somov was the son of the curator of the Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg and studied at the Academy of Arts there from 1888 until 1897.  From 1897 until 1899 he lived in Paris.

Somov was fascinated, not just be eighteenth century painting, but also the music of the time so it is no surprise to see him producing illustrations set in the period.

The influence of Watteau and Fragonard is evident in these illustrations, especially in this amusing picture of a lady using a chamber pot.

These illustrations are from a book of erotic short stories published in St Petersburg in 1918, Le Livre de la Marquise, at a time when the Russian Revolution had resulted in a temporary end to censorship in the country.

Somov had been working on these illustrations since the turn of the century.  Interestingly, a later edition contained more explicit pictures including different versions of some of the originals, as can be seen above.

In the nineteen twenties Somov moved, briefly, to the United States but was not happy there and returned to Paris where he lived for the rest of his life.

Tristan and Isolde by Rogelio de Egusquiza y Barrena (1845-1915) Tristan und Isolde: Death (1910)

Tristan and Isolde are two of the great lovers of legend and since their first literary appearance, as Tristan and Iseult, in 12th century Franco-Norman poetry, there have been many versions of their story.  Like Romeo and Juliet, Paolo and Francesca and Anthony and Cleopatra, it is a doomed love which suited the Victorian sensibility.  Matters are complicated in that the story is a love triangle in that Tristan is sent by his uncle, King Mark of Cornwall, to bring back the Irish princess Isolde to be Mark's bride.  However, on the way back the two take a love potion.  Depending on the version of the story this is either accidentally or Isolde takes the potion destined for her and King Mark and gives it to Tristan instead, thus becoming a typical (for the Victorians) predatory woman.  The two fall in love but King Mark doesn't learn of their affair for some time. When he does he decides to hang Tristan and burn Isolde at the stake but Tristan escapes, rescues Isolde and flees to the forest where they are not discovered again for some years.  Eventually Mark persuades Tristan to return Isolde to him and he is banished to Brittany where he marries a woman, also called Iseult ( not coincidentally).

Tristan and Isolde: Life (1912)

In one version of the story, Mark treacherously kills Tristan, while he is playing the harp, with a poisoned lance. In the other version Tristan is injured in a fight with other knights and sends his friend to bring Isolde, who is the only person who can heal him, across the sea.  His friend is told to display white sails on his ship if he is bringing back Isolde and black if he is not. However, Tristan's jealous wife, sick of being an Isolde substitute lies to him about the colour of the sails and Tristan, thinking that Isolde no longer cares for him, dies of grief.  On arriving in Brittany Isolde also dies on seeing Tristan's body and this is the scene depicted in Egusquiza's painting.

Study for Isolde (1893)

It is not surprising that such a melodramatic story appealed to the Victorians and many artists of the time did their own paintings of the couple, mostly full of medieval backdrops and costume.  Egusqueza's version has a rare eroticism about it with Isolde barely dressed in the flimsiest of,  garments, her breasts exposed. He based Isolde's figure on a nude study he had done some years before, adding the lightest drapery to the figure for the painting.   This was not a random drawing, later re-used for unconnected paintings years later, in the manner of Delacroix; he was already planning his Tristan and Isolde painting back in 1893.

Study for Isolde (1896)

Egusqueza came from a well-off family from Santander. in the north-western, Basque area of Spain and studied art in Madrid and then Paris. After some travel he returned to Paris and stayed there until a one year visit to Rome.  In 1876 when back in Paris, he first heard the music of Richard Wagner and from then on developed a fixation on the operas of the composer.  He later got to know Wagner and drew his portrait. 

Kundry (1894)

He started to feature Wagnerian themes in his paintings, although more often illustrating characters rather than actual scenes.   This drawing is of Kundry, the high messenger of the Grail, from Wagner's final opera Parsifal.  Wagner handed Egusquiza a copy of the manuscript of Parsifal for him to look at in 1880 and the painter attended the premier in Bayreuth in 1882.

Kundry (1906)

Egusqueza knew Wagnjer's operas intimately and played the music himself on the piano.  He began to attend performances of the operas in Bayreuth.  He started work on his Tristan and Isolde project in the early eighteen nineties and knew that he wanted to produce  paintings illustrating two key scenes from the opera, Firstly, the finale of Act III with Isolde's death upon the body of Tristan (in Wagner's version of the legend Tristan is still (barely) alive when Isolde finds him on the beach).

Tristan and Isolde: life (1893)

The second painting was to depict Tristan and Isolde alive in the night (from Act II).  The opera itself is about the tensions between night and day with the lovers embracing the night, which enables them to pursue their amorous encounters undiscovered.  It is about life and death too, of course, and Wagner was influenced by the rather pessimistic views of philosopher Artur Schopenhauer, and through Wagner, Egusqueza embraced his views too.  In this early rendering by the artist, a diaphanously clad Isolde is embraced by the warrior Tristan.

Tristan and Isolde (1896)

The figures seem to be enveloped in dark. Egusquiza had written a book on stage lighting and was very aware of the light effects he wanted in his pictures.  The final painting of the lovers alive was not completed until 1912, three years before the artist's death.  Both are large canvases, some five feet by eight.

Tristan and Isolde 1906

In this drawing, Egusquiza presents his final composition for the lovers. Isolde's arm is moved from the initial sketches so that she holds Tristan's wrist, linking them in death.  It was another five years before the final painting was first exhibited at the Salon of the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts in Paris in 1911, where it was rapturously received. Privately owned, Tristan and Isolde: Death  was not seen again in public until a retrospective of the artist in his home town of Santander in 1995.  It made a huge impact and became well known as a result.  In 2000 it was bought by the Bilbao Fine Arts Museum where it hangs today.  Tristan and Isolde: Life is now just forty five miles away in the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Santander and Cantabria.

Egusquiza, through his intimate knowledge of Wagner's opera, has produced a painting that matches the passion and tragedy of the music and is much more than a man and a woman in medieval clothes, like most of the other depictions of the characters.