It’s quite a day for birthdays. There are people like Alexander Pope (best known for not being Pope Alexander), stride pianist Fats Waller, and aviation pioneer Glenn Curtiss. Google is celebrating fossil collector Mary Anning. But I’m taking a different path today—a very different path.

On this day in 1849, the great illustrator and painter Edouard-Henri Avril was born. (He used the pseudonym Paul Avril.) He is best known as a book illustrator, and more specifically, an erotic book illustrator. If you listen to conservatives, you would think that before 1967, sex was something men did to women who put up with it until it was over. But reading old biographies of people like Cervantes, you see that sex has been a varied and creative activity for a very long time.

Before I get to some of Avril’s erotic masterpieces, I’m going to create a fold. I do this just because I don’t want to upset anyone. I’ve mostly eliminated coarse language from the site. And while I think pictures of sex acts are perfectly charming and not at all akin to coarse language (which I’ve come to think of as lazy and crude), I will tip my hat to social norms.

It may be that I’m just naive, but many of Avril’s illustrations seem sweet to me. The following image is what I imagine happens after the curtain falls at the end of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. But I’ll admit, it could just be a man with a random prostitute. I like how clearly the woman’s control is rendered:

Most of Avril’s illustrations are a bit more adventurous. There are lots of orgies, which include both female and male homoerotica, as in the following:

Some of the pictures I find kind of creepy, like The Ceremonial of Fanny’s Initiation. It shows Fanny having sex with a man (there are many in this series), while a bunch of Georgian period gentle folk watch. I assume Fanny is some kind of a prostitute, because she is always portrayed as capable but disinterested, unlike the women in his other series. Here is a good example Fanny and the Sailor:

I will just leave you with the illustration that really made me put this below the fold. Bestiality is certainly part of human sexuality. But I’m really glad that Avril illustrates this without romanticizing it. That goat is not happy:

Happy birthday Edouard-Henri Avril!