Masturbating Venuses by Gustav Klimt

Sitting in an armchair (1913)

It is Masturbation Month, once more and so I am celebrating by re-posting some of my lost posts featuring frigging females.  What better place to start than with the splendidly abandoned drawings of Austrian artist Gustav Klimt (1862-1918).  Since I first posted these two years ago I have located a number of extra pictures.

Seated woman with legs spread (1916)

Klimt was born in Baungarten, near Vienna, and early in his artistic career focussed on painting architectural decoration.  His initial treatment of figures was very classical and tight (almost photographic) and he only evolved his distinctive linear with bold blocks of colour approach to painting in the mid eighteen nineties.   This new style, as an influential member of the Wiener Sezession movement, brought him fame and wealth, in contrast to his poverty stricken student days.

By 1904 Klimt had conceived the idea of keeping a number of models (some of whom became his mistresses) on hand in his studio for whenever inspiration struck him.  Described as being like a harem, they inhabited a waiting room connected to his studio until, like a a sultan summoning a favourite concubine, they were invited into the studio itself.

Recumbent semi-nude from the right (1914)

Shortly after Klimt's death the art critic Franz Servaes wrote, rather breathlessly, about Klimt's studio. "He was surrounded by mysteriously naked female creatures, who, while he stood silently in front of his easel, promenaded up and down his studio, lolled and lazed around and bloomed throughout the day - always ready for the master's signal to remain obediently stiff as soon as he had glimpsed a pose or a movement that tantalised his sense enough to fleetingly capture it in a quick drawing."

The use of the word 'lolled' by Servaes is interesting as it is exactly the same term used by a journalist in the sixties when describing the abandoned poses of the girls in the early days of Penthouse, compared with Playboy.  Klimt's women loll with thighs spread and fingers delicately probing at their vulvae, just as Bob Guccione had them in the pages of his magazine seventy years later.  Like the Penthouse Pets, Klimt's girls are lost in their own self-absorbed reverie.  Abandoned, reflective, disinterested but assertively feminine.

Reclining semi-nude facing right(1914)

We know nothing about these models, really, other than the fact that some, at least, were prostitutes, as Klimt didn't keep diaries and all his papers were destroyed by a lover after his death.  But the freshness and spontaneity of Klimt's line shows us that these were real women, not a created fantasy, exposing themselves and masturbating for the artist.  

Klimt produced around five or six thousand sheets of drawings during his lifetime and women were overwhelmingly his favourite subject.  Some were undoubtedly done as studies for his paintings but these erotic pictures were done for himself and were not, of course, exhibited during his lifetime.

Many of Klimt's figure drawings of women demonstrate similar approaches.  Klimt often used. extreme foreshortening in his erotic figures figures so as to focus attention on his models' genitals,   Legs are spread and pussies are thrust at the viewer tin away that makes them the unavoidable centre of the composition.

Another aspect that adds to their erotic charge is the use of partial nudity.  The models in his masturbation pictures are never depicted nude; they are all wearing clothes which have been pulled up or aside to reveal themselves.  There is really only one part of the body Klimt is interested in here.

These were not created for 'gentlemen collectors' (as were Boucher's explicit nudes and some of Courbet's paintings, for example) or as pornography; they were part of Klimt's obsession with documenting the essence of life of the human being, including its sexuality. Female sexuality, which was being acknowledged openly for the first time, having previously been denied, ignored or even feared, being a subject of great fascination to Viennese artists during this period.

Seated woman with hat (1910)

Equally, these women are not the idealised ones of his earlier works but are everyday women, dressed or undressed.  His use of line is not employed to create an image of improved beauty but to record the women as they were at that point in time. legs apart in his studio, frigging unconcernedly as if the artist wasn't there in the room with them, watching their movement and inhaling their musky scent.  Like Guccione's later photographs, it is the art of the voyeur and, as we will see in a future post, very different to his contemporary, Egon Schiele's, approach.

Klimt had a number of run-ins with the public and critics over his frank depiction of women's bodies in his paintings but these pictures were not, of course, made public at the time.  Although Vienna was becoming a hotbed of sensual exploration during this period these would have been considered obscene and even as recently as 1966 an Italian judge branded them as just that.

From Dialogue of the Courtesans (1907)

In 1907, however, Klimt was asked to illustrate a new German translation of Lucian of Samosata's Dialogue of the Courtesans by Franz Blei.  He went back to the drawings he had done in his studio and fifteen of them were published in the book: the only occasion his erotic drawings saw the light of day during his lifetime. The drawings included single girls, a copulating man and woman and a lesbian threesome (Lucian's book, published in 43 AD, was, perhaps, the first to discuss lesbianism).  Two out of the fifteen drawings featured masturbating women

From Dialogue of the Courtesans (1907)

At the time it was published, the writer Felix Salten said about Klimt's illustrations: "You poor fools who do not hear the nameless power of this sacred invocation of carnality.  Here is the only artist whore bourgeois prudishness does not obscure nature in all its glory."

Masturbating girl 1917

Venus of consequence from 1934

This tasteful, anonymous photograph of a young lady holding an ornate vase had enormous consequences for the men's magazine market into the nineteen sixties.  It appeared in the January 1934 issue of the pulp magazine Pep Stories which was published, like many other pulp magazines of the time, by Romanian born Harry Donenfeld.  A number of his magazines included topless, artistic nudes among the stories but this one went further, as the model's pubic hair was visible. As a result, the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice charged Donenfeld with  producing obscene periodicals.

Donenfeld narrowly avoided jail but only because one of his Romanian employees took the rap and said that his boss didn't know that he had inserted the picture into the magazine.  He was jailed instead of Donenfeld.  A grateful Donenfeld gave the man a job for life with no requirement to actually do anything, when he emerged from prison.

It was this case that so terrified the lawyers at Playboy and Penthouse in the nineteen sixties, who didn't want to see their publishers being jailed for showing fur flashing photos.  

Bathtime Venus: Jeune femme au bain by Fernand Lematte (1850-1929)

Here we have a lady climbing into a, particularly luxurious looking, transparent bath by French painter Fernand Lematte.  Lematte studied at the l'école des Beaux-Arts in Paris and in 1870 won the Prix de Rome, which enabled him to live and work in Rome from 1871 until 1874.

A Dryad (1871)

In an artistically and commercially successful career he painted historical and classical subjects as well as portraits and religious paintings. 

Odalisque with a monkey

He also did some orientalist works, both in the travelogue style and in the more fantasy harem type, as here.

A bather

From later in his life we have this more impressionist style al fresco bather.  He is a painter who is little known these days, despite his prize winning career but he produced some delightful paintings.

Swedish Venus: Model Writing Postcards by Carl Larsson

Model Writing Postcards (1906)

Here is a lovely watercolour by influential Swedish painter Carl Larsson.  It is a lovely image of a model taking a break from posing to write some postcards (the emails of the day - Europeans sent huge numbers of postcards to each other at the beginning of the twentieth century).

The Model on the Table (1906)

In the foreground can be seen another painting by Larsson, Model on the Table, which depicts a real (perhaps the same) model posing on a table with a couple of mannequins.

Reclining Nude on Blue Sofa

Carl Larsson (1853-1919) was brought up in a very poor family and his scholarship from a special poor school to the Royal Swedish Academy of Arts provided him with a real escape from an unsettled and unpleasant childhood.  While studying in Stockholm he also worked as a caricaturist and graphic artist for several  Swedish newspapers, earning enough to support his destitute parents.

Nude with grapes (1872)

Larsson had already developed a facility for drawing the nude and earned a medal from the Academy for his nude drawing.  This example, done when he was nineteen, shows an idealised classical style, so different from his later, realistic, illustrative style.

Karin Larsson

After several years working as a book illustrator, he moved to Paris but did not get on with the French artistic scene. In 1882 he moved to Grez-sur-Loing, a Scandinavian artists' colony outside Paris and developed his distinctive watercolour style.  It was there that he met his future wife, another artist,  the beautiful and talented, Karin Bergöö. They got married the following year and their first child (of eight) was born the year after that.  

Leontine, Bare Backed Sitting in the Studio (1902)

Leontine standing (1902)

They returned to Sweden and, luckily for them, Karin's father was a wealthy businessman who bought them a cottage in the village of Sundborn, where her father had been born..  The couple decorated it themselves in a mixture of British Arts and Crafts style (they subscribed to The Studio, the movement's magazine), Swedish folk design and Japanese style, influenced by the popular prints of the time.  The biggest influence, however, was Karin who employed her artistic skills to design and weave fabrics for the house.  She also designed furniture, working with local craftsmen.  Eschewing the usual gloomy, dark Swedish style of the time they created a home full of light and colour.  

Rose and Back

Lisa with Flower Pot (1910)

My Wife

The English style, wild garden was becoming popular in Sweden at the time and gardens became places to relax and enjoy the outdoors rather than just somewhere to grow vegetables. Karin loved her garden and her flower arrangements often appear in Carl's paintings (as in the right of Model Reading Postcards).

When the Children Have Gone to Bed (1895)

It was also Karin who gave Carl the idea of doing paintings of the interiors of their house and these pictures were released as prints and in books.  The first of these, Ett Hem (A home), published in 1898, is still in print today. It was the technological developments in colour printing, from 1890, which enabled Larsson to produce prints and albums of his work, enhancing his reputation, considerably.

In 1909 a German publisher produced another book of his work called Das Haus in der Sonne featuring Larsson's drawings and paintings of  their house.  It sold 40,000 copies in three months and since then has been reprinted more than 40 times.  It showcased the Larsson's ideas about interior decoration to the world.

Larsson's House in the Sun

The Larsson's house, Lilla Hyttnäs, today (the part of the house in the painting is at the far left)

This book created the new 'Swedish Style' which has been so influential on interior designers ever since.  Every time you see painted old furniture or blue or green pastel painted wooden walls in someone's house it is because of the Larssons. The Larsson's house became so famous that people came to visit it as tourists.  Their home, preserved as it was, in still owned by their family and is now open to the public in the summer.  It receives about 60,000 visitors a year.

Girl crouching (1911)

Apart from his nudes and interior studies Larsson was a wonderful portraitist, often using his children as subjects.  He also produced book illustrations, landscapes and other pictures of the village and countryside where he lived.

Midvinterblot (1914)

Despite the popularity of his domestic interior watercolours, Larsson believed that his own best works were his large murals.  He had produced three of these for the Swedish National Museum's interior but the final one, which he considered his masterpiece, Midvinterblot (Midsummer Sacrifice), was rejected by the museum's board.  The controversy split the Swedish art establishment and even the government became involved.  The rejection of the picture hit Larsson hard and he suffered from bouts of depression.  The historical subject was considered not appropriate for Sweden's new modern view of itself at the time. Eventually, it was sold to a Japanese collector in 1987 who then lent it back to the National Museum where it became rehabilitated in the eyes of the Swedish public.  Eventually, the museum raised the money to buy it back and it was installed in the place it was designed for.

During the time he was painting Midvinterblot, Larsson started to suffer with eye problems and headaches. He concentrated on finishing his memoirs and died in February 1919.  In his posthumously published memoirs he acknowledged that his domestic pictures were really the ultimate expression of his personality and his love for his family.

In front of the Mirror (1898)

The copyright on his published pictures expired in 1969 and from this point his pictures were distributed widely, building his and Karin's reputation and that of Swedish Style, to where it is today.  Now you can buy Carl Larsson colouring books and calendars.

Carl and Karin Larsson

Three vintage Venuses

Although I am continuing to repopulate the new Venus Observations with recovered art and early photography posts from the past, it is nice to be able to pop in a new one once in a while.  This photograph of three enticing ladies probably dates back to around the mid nineteen twenties, when short hair became the fashion (although in the early part of the decade women risked social opprobrium by cutting their hair).  The middle lady has her fingers under the other girls' groins but there is no contact.

Venus as mistress: Yvonne Aubicque

Early Morning (1922)

This is an affectionate portrait of Yvonne Aubicque, the mistress of its Irish painter, Sir William Orpen (1878-1931), who has several fascinating stories connected to her.   Called, Early Morning it is a wonderful evocation of the pleasures of a mistress, as she sits surrounded by domestic detritus that indicates no great desire to leave her bed anytime soon.

William Orpen

William Orpen was born in Dublin and attended the Metropolitan School of Art there, to which he was admitted at the age of eleven, such was his natural skill. At the age of seventeen he moved to London to attend the  Slade School of Art.   Catching the attention of John Singer Sargent he rapidly became one of the country's top portrait painters.  Although he married and had three children he had a string of mistresses, many of whom modelled for him, despite constant worries about his own unattractiveness (caused, it is said, by overhearing his parents asking themselves why he was so ugly and their other children so attractive!).  

The Spy/ The Refugee I (1918)

In 1916, Orpen was appointed as an official war artist and carried on in this role after the war, where he was was the official painter of the Versailles treaty signing.  While in France, he fell head over heels for Yvonne Aubicque, the daughter of the Mayor of Lille, who he mat met in hospital, when suffering with blood poisoning, where she was working as a Red Cross volunteer.  He painted two portraits of her during the war but when he sent the paintings back to Britain he found himself in hot water, as official war artists were only supposed to paint pictures of military subjects. 

The Spy/The Refugee II (1917)

Even worse, he had called his pictures of her "The Spy" and claimed she was a German spy who had been executed by the French, no doubt in order to give it an acceptable "military" provenance.  However, the subject of female spies was sensitive at this period as English nurse Edith Cavell had been shot by the Germans for helping allied soldiers to escape and Mata Hari had also just been executed by the French.  Orpen found himself facing a court martial and had to confess that the paintings were of his mistress. One of Orpen's friends was Lord Beaverbrook, who was instrumental in preventing the court martial, although Orpen was severely reprimanded and only just hung on to his official war artist role.  Orpen changed the name of the pictures to The Refugee and, like his war paintings, they now belong to the Imperial War Museum in London.

The Beaverbrooke copy on the Antiques Roadshow

There is an interesting coda to this story.  In 2013 a man brought a picture along to the filming of the BBC show Antiques Roadshow, where members of the public bring along items and a panel of experts tell them about them.  It was a copy of Orpen's The Refugee I.  The owner had taken it to the Imperial War Musem who had said it was just a standard copy. He was not convinced, however, and was puzzled by the high quality of the picture and the fact it was signed Nepro Mailliw (William Orpen written backwards).  He discovered that in 1920 Orpen had gone back to France and painted another version of the painting for Lord Beaverbrook as a thank you for helping him escape the court martial.  The expert on the show confirmed that the picture was indeed a copy but was made by Orpen himself and was the long lost Beaverbrook version.  Much to the owner's shock, he valued it at £250,000.

Yvonne Aubicque in 1918

What happened to the lovely Yvonne?  She remained as Orpen's mistress for more than ten years; although he usually ran more than one mistress simultaneously.  When in France, after the war, he had bought a black Rolls-Royce and hired a sixteen year old called William Grover as his chauffeur.  Grover was the son of an English father and a French mother but had been born in France. He immediately took a fancy to Yvonne and she him.  You might expect all sorts of problems to follow but when Yvonne stopped being Orpen's mistress he gave her his Rolls-Royce and a large house in Paris.  Grover and Yvonne married in 1929.  Grover had always been keen on cars and motorcycles and had started to race motorcycles at the age of fifteen.  Worried about what his father might think, he used the pseudonym W Williams when he started to race. By 1926 he had graduated to car racing.  In 1928 he won the French Grand Prix and in 1929, in a British Racing Green Bugatti, he won the inaugural Monaco Grand Prix.  Now known as Grover-Williams he retired from racing to concentrate on business, including working for Bugatti and running a kennel where Yvonne bred Highland Terriers which she successfully showed at Crufts dog show, eventually becoming a judge there. They were a wealthy couple and, apparently, good dancers, winning several competitions.

Grover Williams leading the 1929 Monaco Grand Prix

With the German invasion of France Grover-Williams fled to Britain where, because of his fluency in both French and English, he was recruited into the Special Operations Executive where he was trained at their wartime base, the home of Lord Montague, Beaulieu in Hampshire, now, coincidentally, the site of the National Motor Museum.  Grover-Williams was dropped into France, with no contacts or support on the ground, and was instructed to set up a new resistance network in Paris, as the previous one had been compromised. Yvonne moved back to Paris as well, although she lived in their house in Rue Weber while he lived in a separate apartment.  He recruited two former fellow racing drivers and they began sabotage work, principally at the Citroen factory.  In August 1943 Grover-Williams was captured by the Germans as their network had been compromised and it was believed that he was interrogated by the Gestapo and shot almost immediately.

Reclining Woman.  Yvonne Aubicque by William Orpen

However, in the 1990's a different story emerged.  It looked as if Grover-Williams survived and was taken to a prison camp in Poland.  It then appears that he joined MI6 after the war.  Even more strangely, in 1948 a man called George Tambal turned up at Yvonne's house in Evreux and moved in with her. She introduced him as her cousin but the locals thought they acted more like lovers.  He claimed to have arrived from America via Uganda, bringing animals for the depleted zoos of Europe. Grover-Williams, it should be noted, had family in America and a sister in Uganda. Also, amazingly, Tambal's date of birth was exactly the same as Grover-Willams'. Tambal was very knowledgeable about motor cars and bore the scars of a beating around the head. 

No-one has ever proved it conclusively but it looks like Grover-Williams survived the war, joined MI6 (MI6 have admitted they know what happened to Grover-Willams but they won't say what) and then rejoined his wife in Evreux.  She died in 1973 and Tambal/Grover-Williams was killed in 1983, at the age of eighty, having been knocked off his bicycle by a car, ironically, driven by a German tourist.

Elements of this remarkable story were used by Robert Ryan in his novel Early One Morning in which a fictionalised version of Yvonne Aubicque appears as Eve Aubique.

Sir William Orpen died in Kensington in 1931, possibly from complications arising from syphilis, and at the time was probably the most famous artist in Britain.