Romantique, Erotic Art of the Early Nineteenth Century

Published by Pepin Press, 2000, hardcover, illustrated, index, 224 pages, 29 cms x 30.7 cms x 3.3 cms, condition: new.

The extensive collection of erotic engravings and lithographs presented in this book comes primarily from France during the July Monarchy (18301848). The reign of Louis Philippe, the Citizen King, was relatively calm and peaceful, characterized by the rise of the bourgeoisie, economic prosperity, and surprisingly tolerant censorship. It was also the time of the expansion in France of a new technique, lithography, which originated in a Germany that did not enjoy as liberal a cultural climate as France. As a modern and economical technique for the mass reproduction of images, lithography made art accessible to the general public for the first time. These factors, together with a rather free-thinking intellectual climate which enabled philosophers of the humanities like Saint-Simon to find numerous followers, newspapers to print caricatures as biting as those of a Daumier, and artists to lead openly bohemian livescombined to create the atmosphere in which the erotic art collected in this book could flourish. The illustrations in this "Romantic" work are part of Hans-Jürgen Döpp's famous private collection of erotic art, characterized by its rarity, in both quantity and quality. The highly artistic quality and aesthetic appeal of these images distance them both from pure p*********y and from outdated historical documentation. To the modern eye, they are more pleasing in composition and execution than they are exciting to the senses, and the humor inherent in most of the works presented here is as fresh as it was 170 years ago.