Artists - Part 88

Edouard Henri Avril

Edouard Henri Avril (1849-1928) was a French painter.  He is best known for his erotic paintings illustrating the book De Figuris Veneris.  It was an anthology of ancient Greek and Roman writings on erotic topics, first published in Latin and Greek by German classicist Friedrich Karl Forberg in 1824.

The book was later translated into modern European languages (English, French, German, Spanish).  The 1906 French edition, above, included a set of 20 illustrations by Edouard Henri Avril, who illustrated erotic literature under the pseudonym Paul Avril.  You could call it Victorian-era porn.

Most of the illustrations showed hetero sex, but a few showed male-to-male sex.  Above, Plate VII was called Hadrian and Antinous in Egypt.  Historically, Hadrian was a Roman Emperor who took the youth Antinous as a lover.  In the year 130, while they were visiting Egypt, Antinous drowned in the Nile, and Hadrian was devastated.

Plate VIII showed Socrates and Alcibiades.  Alcibiades was an Athenian statesman and general in the 5th century BC.  He was a student of Socrates, and Plato said that Alcibiades was Socrates' beloved.

Plate XI is untitled, but it shows a youth masturbating to a vision of hetero sex in the background.

Plate XVIII shows some MMF sex.  There were many other plates showing hetero sex, plus one showing a man fucking a goat, which I'm not going to show you.

Some consider Avril the father of erotic painting.