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.