Venus with a dog 1: By Jean-Honoré Fragonard

Young woman playing with dog (La Gimblette) (c.1770)

 Artists have quite often included dogs in erotic art, not necessarily because of any desire to depict women in intimate congress with them but more, we would suggest, to imply something of the smell of a woman; particularly their nether regions, as we will see in a future post.

Here we have two definitely erotic, but also delicate, works by the French artist Jean-Honoré Fragonard (1732-1806).  Fragonard was born in the world capital of perfume, Grasse.  Originally destined to be a notary, his artistic talent was spotted, as an eighteen year old, by François Boucher and his progress was so rapid that he won the Prix de Rome even before he enrolled in the Academy.  After studying in Rome he became a favourite of the court of Louis XV, producing a number of erotic works for private consumption.  The French Revolution deprived him of his wealthy patrons and he himself felt it sensible to leave Paris for the country, where he continued to paint, contributing to his total of over 550 completed paintings. However, by the time he returned to Paris, a few years before his death, he had been totally forgotten and remained so for many decades.  Now he has been rehabilitated as one of the great masters of French painting and a precursor of the Impressionists.

Fragonard’s approach to this small but distinct genre includes these two paintings, which rely for their erotic effect on conveying a strong tactile sense, in similar poses, revealing the backs of the subjects’ thighs.  

In the top painting, Young Woman Playing with Dog,  the dog is in the shadow, whereas the light in the painting is focussed on that shadowed, suggestive area between her thighs.  The subject was interpreted by several sculptors, including Fragonard's great grandson, Antonin Fragonard (1857-1887).

This picture was also interpreted by several artists and printmakers. In this one, obviously based on a print of the painting as it is reversed, the girl's nether regions are carefully concealed by a sheet.  The dog has changed colour too.

Girl with dog (c. 1770)

The one above, Girl with Dog,  is on display in the Alte Pinakothek in Munich.  The contast between the dog’s fluffy tail and the girl’s inner thighs are, no doubt, the cause of her sweet smile although it is painted in such a way as to (just) allow for a more innocent explanation.

Both paintings are sometimes known as La Gimblette (a sort of pastry) Fragonard produced several versions, some now lost, where the girl is depicted as offering a pastry to the dog.  Considered very risqué at the time, engravings of it were marked “not for display”.

In this version of Fragonard's picture, produced as a miniature, no doubt for a gentleman collector, the dog's tail has been shortened to reveal the tip of its tail just stroking the girl's exposed mound.

Venus in Black Stockings 2: Pictures by Manuel Robbe

This wonderfully erotic print of a masturbating girl is by French artist Manuel Robbe (1872-1936). Although he worked in pastels, oils and watercolour it is as a printmaker that he is best known. His technique of using a poupee (a cloth covered ball) to apply sugar and indian ink to his metal plates, then heating them as well as using the same plate for multiple colours produced the multi-tonal blacks and greys which are such a feature of this print. It also meant that each one was slightly different.  The girl's red hair provides the only flash of colour in this otherwise monochrome picture.  This is a potent image for Agent Triple P because, as a teenager, the first girl we ever saw playing with herself, in reality, was a redhead.  She wasn't wearing black stockings though, just a white towelling dressing gown.

Seated nude 1910

Robbe was born in Paris and studied at Lycées Condorcet and Louis-le-Grand then at the Académie Julian and the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. .  He won a bronze medal at the 1900 Paris Exposition.  Many of his pictures focus on women and provide an excellent window into the world of the Belle Epoque.

Femme ajustant son bas

During the Great War Robbe enlisted as a pilot and won the Croix de Guerre for his combat bravery.

La Puce

Although many of his pictures were conventional there is certainly a number of overtly erotic works in his catalogue, such as this breast fondling young lady.   We will post a couple of these over on our Seduction of Venus blog, shortly.  Although puce means flea in French it also is a term used for a virgin girl.

Les Bas Noirs

Harem Venus: Scheherazade by Sir Arthur Streeton

Scheherazade (1897) 

Here is a spare but splendid interpretation of Scheherazade by Australian impressionist painter Sir Arthur Streeton (1867-1943). Streeton's parents were English and they met on the ship taking them to live in Australia, where Stretton was born in Geelong in 1867. Streeton studied at the National Gallery Art School in Melbourne. He travelled to London in 1897 but couldn't replicate the success he had achieved in Australia. 

Spirit of the Drought (1895)

He served as an official war artist in France in 1918 but, unlike his contemporaries, his war pictures are strangely empty of people; focussing instead on the landscape of battlefields. It is as a landscape painter that he is best known and today his paintings of Australian scenery fetch millions of dollars. He was knighted in 1937. His striking painting of Scheherazade is free of all the usual orientalist fripperies and is all the more effective as a result. 

Nineteenth century Venus with a rolling pin

This nineteenth century lady, lost in her own reverie, is giving herself a good seeing to with what looks like a small rolling pin!  The striped stockings were very popular in the 1880s and 1890s.  Almost certainly French.

Reading Venus by Delphin Enjolras

The lovely and talented author, Scarlett Knight, has made an excellent resolution to read a proper book (not from a screen) for an hour a day. I am as guilty as most, these days, of reading things on my Kindle and although it is very useful, especially when travelling, I do sometime feel guilty about possessing such a characterless digital device. I sometimes used to travel in the company of a senior banker from one of the UK’s major banks, and he always was reading from a vintage hardback edition of something. I was most impressed by this!  

There really is no substitute for a physical book and recently I bought the first three volumes of Ian Fleming's James Bond books, in lovely editions by The Folio Society, who still produce properly made and beautiful books.  Hopefully, they will do all of Fleming's Bond books with illustrations by retro-style English artist Fay Dalton. 

Delphin Enjolras (1857-1945) originally started as a landscape painter before focussing almost exclusively on his favourite subject of women, usually depicted naked and lit in interesting ways. When I read Scarlett's post this picture of a woman reading, her light draped in a red transparent fabric, lolling naked except for a flimsy wrap on a polar bear skin, sprang immediately to mind!  More of Enjolras' work another time.

Reading Vemus: La Liseuse by Jean-Jacques Henner

Here is nice reading Venus in the delightfully redheaded form of La Liseuse ( The reader) by French painter Jean-Jacques Henner (1829-1905). We don't know exactly when he painted this but it was some time between 1880 and 1890. It is a lot looser and more informal than his earlier academic nudes. Henner was a great teacher and set up a special school for women painters in 1874, as they were not permitted to join the École des Beaux-Arts until 1897. Some of these women painters became his models. One of these was Dorothy Tennant, a talented painter in her own right, who had also studied under Edward Poynter. She later married the explorer Henry Morton Stanley and became Lady Stanley when he was knighted in 1899.

Odalisque Venus 2: by Frederick Vezin

Here is another odalisque (also known as Schleier Tanzerin (Veil Dancer), this time by the American painter Frederick Vezin (1859-1933).  Vezin was born in that most artistic of American cities, Philadelphia, where Triple P spent an enjoyable week a few years ago.

He studied at the Düsseldorf Art Academy in Germany and died there in 1933. The Düsseldorf School influenced the American Hudson River school and, as a result, many other American painters went to study there.  Vezin's family were originally French Huguenots and some of them fled France for Germany, settling in Hanover.  Another branch of the family, who had stayed in France, moved from Bordeaux to Philadelphia in 1813.  The family connections with Germany made it easy for Vezin, when he wanted to study in that country and he joined the Düsseldorfer Kunstakademie in 1876.  Apart from a short stay in Münich, he lived in Düsseldorf until his death.  His uncle lived in London and Vezin travelled there and did a painting of Henley Regatta. 

Most famous for his landscapes, portraits and interiors, this odalisque painting is an unusual but not unique subject for him. he also produced this reclining odalisque, although the original is damaged.

Recumbent nude (c.1905)

This girl is not specifically labeled as an odalisque but she is lying on an eastern rug, which gives the painting orientalist qualities.

An odalisque (the French form of the Turkish odalik) was a maid to the concubines and wives of the Ottoman sultan.  If she was particularly attractive she might be trained to sing or dance and thus earn the chance to become a concubine.  Perhaps this young lady is doing an audition!

Aquatic Venus: Ellen Koeniger by Alfred Stieglitz (1916)

Here, from over a hundred years ago, are some wonderful exercises in form and texture by the American photographer Alfred Stieglitz (1864-1946), who was one of the first great art photographers (not that he would have approved of the term).  The subject is Miss Ellen Koeniger, the niece of a fellow photographer and friend of Stieglitz, Frank Eugene.  Looking as if she is wearing a modern triathlon suit I have read some comments that this is nothing like a traditional women's bathing suit of the time which would have been nothing like as revealing as this.  That is true, as regards beach wear but I think there are two possibilities.  Firstly, it looks exactly like the swim suits worn by competitive swimmers from the 1912 Olympics, when women's swimming was included in the programme for the first time.  Secondly, it could be man's suit.  Whatever, Miss Koeniger looks sensational in it.

Stieglitz lived in New York but had his summers on Lake George in the Adirondack Mountains.  No less a personage than Thomas Jefferson said:"Lake George is without comparison, the most beautiful water I ever saw; formed by a contour of mountains into a basin... finely interspersed with islands, its water limpid as crystal, and the mountain sides covered with rich groves... down to the water-edge: here and there precipices of rock to checker the scene and save it from monotony." You can see one of the islands in the background shot above.  The lake became a popular retreat for artists.

Stieglitz was born in New Jersey in 1864 and his first trips to Lake George were with his wealthy parents who, like many rich New Yorkers, sought to escape the heat and humidity of the city in the summer.  Fearing that the education Stieglitz was getting in New York was not challenging enough his father took the family back to his native Germany for three years and it was while studying chemistry in Berlin that Stieglitz first became interested in photography. Stieglitz stayed on in Germany, not returning to the US until 1890.

There is some suggestion that these shots were not all done at the same time and that this one, in particular, was photographed at Silver Bay.  However, as Silver Bay is only fifteen miles from Lake George it is more likely to be a generalisation as to location.  The distinctive rough edges to the legs of the swimsuit are the same, as is the arrangement of her headscarf.

This clothed  shot packs more eroticism into its frame than the whole of the modern incarnation of Playboy, I would argue. It also clearly demonstrates the difference between artistic erotica and pornography, something which  many commentators seem unable to grasp. 

These final two shots are more snapshots than figure studies, perhaps, but Miss Koeniger's personality shines through and she gives us what would now be called a nip slip, adding to the informal joy of the shot.