Two Women by Martin van Maële

Here is a juicily explicit painting by French illustrator Martin van Maële (1863-1926).  This illustration appeared in a 1910 edition of Un été à la campagne: correspondance de deux jeunes parisiennes  by  Gustave Droz (1832-1895), a French writer who was also, coincidentally, an illustrator whose work appeared in La Vie Parisienne.  

Van Maële was from Boulogne in France but worked in Paris and Brussels. He first became well known for doing the illustrations for the French edition of HG Wells' The First Men in the Moon in 1901 but it is his erotic illustrations for which he is best known today.  We will have more of his work in due course.

Leda and the Swan by Giovanni Boldini

I will shortly be re-uploading a post on Italian artist Giovanni Boldini, over on Venus Observations.  In the meantime, here is his version of Leda and the Swan.

The Greek legend of Leda and the Swan, has the God Zeus, in the form of a swan seducing (or raping, depending on the version), Leda, the daughter of the King of Aetolia.  Obviously not too traumatised by the event that night she also had sex with her husband and in due course gave birth to two eggs which produced Helen (of Troy) and  Clytemnestra from one egg, and Castor and Pollux from the other.

The subject has enabled artists for centuries to produce images of ecstatic looking women in copulatory poses while claiming that they are just illustrating an acceptable classical subject.  Boldini's version is certainly at the more explicit end of the scale, with the swan between Leda's legs, its feet grasping her thighs as it presses its nether regions into her groin while she looks appropriately overcome.

Ménage à trois from the nineteenth century

My particular friend B send me this amusing photograph of two ladies and a young (he looks younger than the usual sturdy middle aged men you tend to get in these sorts of pictures) gentleman in a nicely composed pile.  This is probably from a French erotic postcard, although latterly it has been used as the cover of a book on German erotica.   Dating these pictures is always problematic and without a very good knowledge of nineteenth century continental millinery it is quite tricky.

The shorter stockings, lingerie, hair styles and less crisp photography would tend to suggest the 1880s or 1890s.  I like the fact that the two ladies are smiling in this one.  One girl happily frigs the man and herself while the other appears to demonstrate pinpoint accuracy in giving him a salty drink.  Of course cameras at the time couldn't capture a lady in mid flow like this, so a little post photographic manipulation would have been needed!