Christmas Venus

A Happy Christmas (or whatever your equivalent may be) to all our readers.  We really appreciate those who come by and, especially, those who take the time to comment.  Your comments and, indeed, requests are always welcome!  When we started this blog a little over four years ago we never dreamed that it would approach the five million visits we are close to now!

Our Christmas girl is by French illustrator Aslan of whose work we will be presenting more in the New Year!

Twenties Venuses by Eugene Reuinier

We have posted some of German artist Eugene Reuinier's (real name Carl Breuer-Courth 1884-1960) frothy erotic drawings on our The Seduction of Venus blog, here, here and here.  Now we will round off our look at his work with a selection of some of his solo ladies.  His slim, leggy beauties all match the idealised shape of the nineteen twenties flapper which was when these illustrations were done.

This page of studies features a lot of Reunier's common themes: girls wearing only stockings, riding crops, stripping off and enjoying their bodies.  The girl enjoying the attention of an excited monkey is something of a one off however!

Reunier often included  fantastical elements and disembodied phalli often appeared in his drawings too but here he combines them into a sort of x-rated Quidditch game, as saucy witches fly around at full moon..

In this study of a bride he makes it quite clear how the young lady views her husband and what it is, exactly, that she is marrying.

Fifty years before Penthouse and Hustler Reunier depicted a girl putting on this assertive spread-legs display.  The interesting thing about this drawing is that he has depicted the creases in the skin across the girl's midsection that you would indeed get from such a pose but which you would not include if drawing an idealised image.  Could it be that this was drawn from  life?

Our final illustration, and Triple P's favourite, is this young lady elegantly servicing herself with a dildo as she, apparently, dreams of a previous or, perhaps, hoped for,encounter.  This is a lovely drawing.  

We have one more Reunier to post under our Venus with a Snake label which we will put up this week.  We have to say that he was one of the very best erotic artists of the last century and had a unique talent for combining character, humour and eroticism without one ever detracting from the others.

Pin-up Venuses by J Frederick Smith

From Sappho The Art of Loving Women

Over on our Seduction of Venus blog we have just posted some photographs of girls kissing by J Frederick Smith.  These are from his book Sappho The Art of Loving Women (1975) which Agent Triple P acquired in one of those discount, remaindered book shops many years ago.  They weren't the first photographs we had seen of women interacting with each other erotically but they remain some of the most tender and romantic we have seen.

Interestingly, Smith turned to photography comparatively late in life and his early pictorial work was as an illustrator; becoming one of the top pin-up artists of the post-war period.  We can't think of another artist who moved on from illustration to becoming a top-class photographer in this way.  

Smith was born in Pasadena in 1917 and by the age of three had posed and drawn his first naked girl; who was also three.  As a teenager he won a three year Walt Disney scholarship to study fine art and design.  He moved to  Greenwich, Connecticut, in 1938 and opened his own studio doing freelance commercial work.   Even at this point he was including glamorous women in his advertising illustrations.

After a break for army service during World War 2 he returned to work as an illustrator, providing pictures for many magazine stories.   

It was his relationship with Esquire, however, that gave him the most recognition.  Esquire (founded in 1933) included Smith as one of the top pin up artists chosen to provide illustrations for their Gallery of Glamor series in 1946. 

Cleopatra

Baroness Mary Vetsera from the Mayerling tale

Mary Vetsera again.  We are not sure about the authenticity of her lingerie and, in reality, she had a rather podgy face not the sculpted beauty of Smith's version

Empress Theodora, wife of the Emperor Justinian (he of the dreaded Institutes)

He not only produced these pictures and the pin-up centrefolds for the magazine but often produced longer, themed pictorials illustrating, for example, famous women from history; all of whom seemed to be falling out of their clothes.

Springtime (1946)

Given the modest nature of Esquire's pin up girls (and Smith's were more modest than some of his contemporaries, such as Gil Elvgren) he nevertheless managed to get an erotic charge into them by revealing unexpected parts of his girls anatomy like these two effective upskirt pictures, which manage to make an erogenous zone out of the underneath of the girls' thighs.

His girls are very classic, they don't look particularly nineteen forties although his style changed over the decades and whilst he moved on to photography he carried on doing illustrations as well into the eighties.

Three from the 1947 Esquire Calendar

May from Esquire's 1948 calendar

Needless to say his illustrations soon started to appear in Esquire's famous calendars as well as the magazine itself.

In 1952 his agents, American Artists, signed a deal with the Chicago-based Brown & Bigelow Calendar firm.  Several Esquire artists teamed up to provide pictures for their 1953 ballyhoo calendar.  Smith provided three gouache paintings for this, two of which can be seen above.  We have to say that the girl with the record player is Agent Triple P's favourite of all those that appear here.

Smith was particularly good at pictures involving groups of figures, as we shall see in some of his illustrations for women's magazines in a future post, but these two examples of girls on the beach and changing demonstrate his eye for composition.

In the next few days we will look at some of his equally elegant photographs.

American Beauty Venus: by James Montgomery Flagg

Here is an elegant confection by American illustrator James Montgomery Flagg. It appeared in the second ever issue of Playboy in January 1954 illustrating a cocktail.

The recipe for the cocktail the picture illustrated, we have to say, sounds quite disgusting. Called an American Beauty, it consists of one part each of brandy, grenadine, dry vermouth and orange juice with a dash of white crème de menthe. We can’t think that orange and mint would be very happy glass fellows! It’s an old cocktail, however, first appearing in Harry Craddock’s classic The Savoy Cocktail Book in 1930. The name refers to a type of rose, as seen in Flagg’s drawing, rather than a girl, which mirrors the colour of the drink.

James Montgomery Flagg, as he always signed himself, was born in 1877. He was something of a prodigy, selling his first magazine illustration at the age of twelve and by the age of fifteen he was on the staff of Life magazine. By the time he was eighteen he had done his first magazine cover illustrations. Although he had a painting accepted by the Paris Salon in 1900 he preferred to stick with illustration.

He was also a writer and got involved in film production to the extent that he was asked to produce promotional films for the US Marines during World War 1. It was during the war that he produced his most famous painting, in 1917, for a recruitment poster. He modelled Uncle Sam’s face on his own. He went on to produce dozens of other propaganda posters.

Flagg with a young Jane Russell in 1941

After the war most of his work was done for magazines but he also did some book covers and a lot of portrait work.

Other than his illustration work he carried on painting for himself and produced some splendid work such as the wonderfully louche The Fencer.

The Fencer

He died in 1960 and at his peak was reckoned to be the highest paid illustrator in America.

James Montgomery Flagg

 
 

Flagg's I Want You poster is one of the most recognisable images in the world but these days he is not well known, outside those who are interested in illustration.   Partly this is because of his concentration on pen and ink work rather than paintings.  He was one of the earliest generations of illustrators whose work reached a wide audience because of techological advances in printing, building on the work of Charles Gibson (creator of the famous Gibson Girls), who was ten years his elder and later became a great friend.

Venus with a Snake 12: Serpieri drawing

This drawing by Serpieri equally falls into our Venus from the Rear category.  Having a Cobra rather than the more traditional python interacting with the young lady makes a change.  Initially we thought that the snake's body looked far too long but, in fact, a King Cobra can grow to over twelve feet in length.  One, which was kept in London Zoo until World War Two, grew to over eighteen feet in length.

The lady seems to be enjoying the Cobra's caress and doesn't seem concerned by its venom.  Although the King Cobra's venom is comparatively weak it delivers so much (5cl) in one bite that it can kill a human.

Mermaid Venuses by Chéri Hérouard

Here, for Scarlett Knight, are a few more mermaids by French illustrator Chéri Hérouard.  Many of Hérouard's mermaids display sapphic tendencies and this one, from 1921, seems intrigued by the shapely legs above her, or possibly she is simply contemplating the nature of legs per se!

In this one our sirene, elegantly equipped with scaled, finned legs rather bizzarely smokes a cigarette underwater whilst looking up the skirts of female skaters above the ice.

This one has a more conventional tail and so she doesn't need "silk stockings"!

As regards fashion this mermaid from 1922 has taken a shine to a bathing beauty's clothes and her hat in particular!

This mermaid is one of the man-hunting predatory types and is cleverly using a parasol to disguise her true natue as she tempts a hapless man to a watery fate. Who could resist such a coquettish hat and clinging, low-cut swimsuit?

This mermaid salutes the "new Ulysses", the American aviator Charles Lindbergh, as she salutes his solo crossing of the Atlantic in 1927.

Finally, we have a merman being ridden by a joyous bathing beauty.  We will feature some more mermaids another time.

Great War French Venus by Chéri Hérouard

La Vie Parisienne was one of a number of French magazines that began publication in the nineteenth century and reached their height during the Great War and the inter-war years.  Basically, La Vie Parisienne was a magazine devoted to the social and artistic milieu of Paris through the lens of humour and some mildly racy illustrations.  Not so mild for General Pershing, the commander of the American forces in Europe in WW1, who promptly warned his troops against buying it.  This, of course, worked exactly as well as you might expect!  The magazine was also banned in Belgium in World War 1.

Cover illustration by Hérouard for La Vie Parisienne (1917)

La Vie Parisienne and its imitators (of whom more another day) had their charming ladies in appropriately patriotic illustrations during the war years and this example by Chéri Hérouard (1881 - 1961) sums up the fate of wives, girlfriends and mistresses with the men away at the front.  There is nothing to do but lounge around in a state of  déshabillé drinking absinthe and thinking about sex.  Or so the illustration seems to suggest!  We will refrain from contemplating the possible role of the dog!

One of Hérouard's mermaids from 1926

Hérouard contributed his first illustration to La Vie Parisienne in 1907 and continued to provide pictures for them until 1952.  He was particularly fond of mermaids which featured in many of his illustrations.

Under the pseudonym of Herric he also produced some mildly erotic works including an illustrated version of the Kama Sutra as well as pictures for other erotic books.  He specialised in sado-masochistic themed illustrations including some rather charming lesbian ones, which we will feature shortly on our Seduction of Venus site, but here is a little taster.