A history of English sexual morals / by Ivan Bloch ; translated by William H. Forstern.

  • Iwan Bloch
Date:
1936
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: A history of English sexual morals / by Ivan Bloch ; translated by William H. Forstern. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    664/700 (page 634)
    In Semite de Londres (the French translation of an Engl x work of the eighteenth century) there is a description of j\ manner in which prostitutes at London brothels wl practising the movements represented on Aretino's drawir of figurae veneris. The first original English obscene pictures were probat those drawn by a London artist in 1755 to illustrate the erol book The Pleasures of Love: Containing a Variety of EnU taining Particulars and Curiosities in the Cabinet of Yen (London, 1755, 16mo). The book, which was extraordinari obscene, contained sixteen etchings. John Cleland's famous obscene novel, Memoirs of Woman of Pleasure (eighteenth century), was also illui trated. The greatest English artist of the eighteenth century who also treated erotic subjects as part of his ' moralising art, was William Hogarth (1697-1764). Hogarth in hi erotic drawings is essentially concerned in stressing thi bestial side and in pointing out the evil consequences o: sensuality and licence. Hogarth was undoubtedly a moralist and did for England what Aristophanes had done for Greece in improving the morals of his age. Hogarth in his inimitable way represented the purely sexual side of love in its personal and social aspects, and in doing so he did not hesitate to be brutally frank. His pictures throw a truer light on the morals of his time than many con- temporary books. Hogarth brought immorality from every hole and corner out into the revealing daylight of his art, representing not only the vice of misery but also the licence of wealth and position. Strangely enough, the greatest authority on Hogarth's works was for long the German satirist, Georg Christian Lichtenberg (1795). ' The Harlot's Progress ' series is one of the most famous of the Hogarthian etchings. They were an instantaneous [ 634 ]