In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, pornography was the preserve of the well to do. Smut was published in shot-run books of a couple of hundred copies. These books were full of stories and poems, but the highlights were the explicit erotic illustrations drawn by the likes of Édouard-Henri Avril (1843 – 1928).
The Bathing Party by Édouard for Fanny Hill
Born in Algiers on May 21st, 1849, Avril fought in the Franco-Prussian war where he earned the Légion d’Honneur after being injured in battle. After the war he attended the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, then worked as a commercial artist.
Though a painter at heart who had been exhibiting since 1878, Avril’s career changed when he accepted a commission to produce erotic illustrations for French writer Théophile Gautier’s novel Fortunio. Serialised in Le Figaro newspaper from May 28 to July 14, 1837, the story of decadence, absurdity and romance begins at an orgy. Gautier published the book under the name L’Eldorado. Avril followed suit, adopting the pseudonym “Paul Avril”. And it was as “Paul Avril” that Henri became a leading illustrator of erotic books.
The Ceremonial of Fanny’s initiation by Paul Avril Fanny Hill
Polly Philips and the young Italian by Paul Avril Fanny Hill
Avril illustrated a lot of books, including John Cleland’s Fanny Hill: Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure (1887) – a book so good it was banned – Les sonnets luxurieux by l’Aretin (1904), Gautier’s Une nuit de Cléopâtre (1894), Daphnis et Chloé by Longus (1898), Gustave Flaubert’s Salammbô (1906) and De figuris Veneris (1906), an anthology of ancient Greek and Roman erotica compiled by German philosopher Friedrich Karl Forberg.
Fanny emboldens William by Édouard-Henri Avril
Fanny’s beauties displayed, illustration for Fanny Hill
VII Louisa and the lodger’s son by Édouard-Henri Avril
Mr. H… surprises Fanny and William by Édouard-Henri Avril
Fanny whips Mr. Barville
In a world so full of porn it can be hard to avoid, why do Avril’s images endure? Writing for the online magazine Fearless Press, T. M. Bernard says that as with Gerda Wegener’s Erotic Illustrations For Les Delassements d’Eros 1925,
“Notice the rapture on the faces of the women, something not usually seen today, where everything is hot and furious, and a woman’s pleasure is often depicted as secondary to the man’s – and the viewers’. What is more, the images reveal a total lack of pretence or shame. Whatever is being shared and experienced together is mutual and pleasurable.”
Avril for Sonetti Lussuriosi by Pietro Aretino, 1892
See more artful erotica in our other posts here.
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