‘Dirty little secrets’: The famous artists whose erotic artworks are finally being celebrated Hidden amongst Turner’s landscapes and thundering skies were intimate paintings of vulvas, penises, naked lovers and post-coital couples

In 1843, staunch moralist and soon-to-be leading art critic, John Ruskin, published the first of his five-volume blockbuster, Modern Painters, with the aim of defending his hero J.M.W. Turner against the hostility of the British press. Turner’s landscapes were becoming too experimental, too dreamlike, and were just too much for many in the Victorian art world. His later works would be attacked as being symptomatic of madness and “indicative of mental disease”.

But in 1843, the 24-year-old Ruskin felt very differently. Ruskin idolised Turner and was determined not only to defend his work on artistic grounds but to expound the moral and spiritual ‘truths’ contained within. Ruskin boldly wrote of Turner’s work, “if you are acquainted with nature, you will know all he has given to be true, and you will supply from your memory and from your heart that light which he cannot give. If you are unacquainted with nature, seek elsewhere for whatever may happen to satisfy your feelings; but do not ask for the truth which you would not acknowledge and could not enjoy.”

The shameful sort

Ironically, 15 years later Ruskin found himself confronted with a shocking ‘truth’ about his hero and it certainly wasn’t one he was prepared to acknowledge or enjoy. When Turner died in 1851, he left the art in his estate to The National Gallery. Turner was a prolific artist and the first inventory of his collection, compiled by his executors in 1854, detailed almost 20,000 works. Ruskin was listed as one of the original executors of Turner’s estate and it was him who offered to sort through, arrange, and catalogue the vast body of drawings, sketches and paintings. In 1857, Ruskin set about the task of opening boxes of paintings, cleaning and labelling drawings, and inventorying piles of sketchbooks, and it was here that Ruskin uncovered what he would later call “painting after painting of Turner’s of the most shameful sort”.

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Hidden amongst Turner’s landscapes and thundering skies were intimate paintings of vulvas, penises, naked lovers, post-coital couples lying entwined in sheets, acts of fellatio, and scenes of energetic group sex. The first painting was dated in 1802 and the last one in 1845, when Turner was 70. His first erotic sketches document his travels across Europe and, if painted from life, they depict his sexual encounters across France and Switzerland.

John Ruskin was many things. He was an art critic, a patron, a social philosopher, a philanthropist, and an artist in his own right, but unfortunately he is now largely remembered as a man so sexually repressed that he couldn’t bring himself to consummate his marriage to Effie Grey (the marriage was eventually annulled after six years.) It was into his prudish hands that Turner’s erotica fell in 1857. Ruskin was so appalled by what he found that he told the Keeper of the National Gallery, Ralph Wornum, to burn them. After the deed was done, Ruskin wrote to Wornum: “I am satisfied that you had no other course than to burn them, both for the sake of Turner’s reputation (they having been assuredly drawn under a certain condition of insanity) and for your own peace. And I am glad to be able to bear witness to their destruction and I hereby declare that the parcel of them was undone by me, and all the obscene drawings it contained burnt in my presence in the month of December 1858.”

Ruskin kept back one bundle of Turner’s erotica, which he wrapped in brown paper and labelled “kept as evidence of a failure of mind only”. Or so the story goes.

It wasn’t until 2004 that this version of events was challenged. Ian Warrell is a world expert on Turner and curator at the Tate and after meticulously cross-referencing the surviving erotic works with the original Victorian inventories, he has concluded that no bonfire ever took place. All the work is accounted for. What’s more, the only evidence of a burning comes from Ruskin himself. Ralph Wornum’s diaries do not mention destroying Turner’s work, and records show that three years after the alleged bonfire the National Gallery was still holding meetings to discuss the offending artworks and what should be done with them.

It seems that as shocked as he was, Ruskin simply could not bring himself to burn the work of his idol. It may have been lingering hero-worship, or a reluctance to destroy art of any kind, or it may have been the introduction of the 1857 Obscene Publications Act which threatened to prosecute the curators of any art collection deemed ‘obscene’ – we will never know for sure. But, one thing is for sure, Turner is not the only great artist whose erotica has been hushed up, lest it tarnish their reputation.

For instance, did you know that Leonardo Da Vinci may have sketched a nude version of the Mona Lisa known as the Monna Vanna in 1514? Or at least the Louvre now believe he may be the artist behind it and are exhibiting the drawing in their upcoming exhibition to mark Leonardo’s 500th anniversary.

What’s more, the sitter is likely to be Andrea Salaì, a pupil and lover of Da Vinci. Salaì modelled for Da Vinci several times and it is probably his face we see in Angelo Incarnato (1515), another erotic work that many attribute to Da Vinci, although others believe this was done by Salaì himself.

It has even been suggested that Salaì may have been the model for the Mona Lisa. These claims have been disputed, but the fact that ‘Mona Lisa’ is an anagram of ‘Mon Salaì’ will continue to flame speculation.

Rembrandt’s erotic prints are often referred to as his ‘dirty little secrets’ in the artworld and are rarely displayed to the public. It wasn’t until 2001 that the British Museum put the works on public display in Britain.

As well as matchstick men and matchstick cats and dogs, L. S. Lowry obsessively painted images of matchstick women in fetish clothing, now known as his ‘marionette works’. Lowry’s erotica was only discovered after his death in 1976 and kept quiet until 2000 when art historian Michael Howard introduced them to the public in his book, ‘Lowry: A Visionary Artist’.

Michelangelo, Paul Cézanne, Pablo Picasso, Auguste Rodin, Edgar Degas, and Edvard Munch are just a handful of great artists who also painted erotica. Even Dr Seuss published a book of nudes in 1939. His Seven Lady Godivas: The True Facts Concerning History’s Barest Family is a reworking of the Godiva legend and features seven nude sisters. Although, ‘erotica’ may be a bit strong. Seuss himself later said of the work, “I don’t think I drew proper naked ladies. I think their ankles came out wrong, and things like that.”

It is easy to laugh at Ruskin’s desperate efforts to conceal the fact his hero also painted sexually explicit scenes, but given that the erotic works of many great artists are only recently being fully acknowledged and displayed to the public, we have to ask just how different we are. Why do we feel so uncomfortable acknowledging the sexual nature of canonical artists? What does it disturb for us? Is the Mona Lisa any less magnificent for knowing Da Vinci may have sketched an alternative version with perky breasts on show?

It is very unlikely that Ruskin burnt Turner’s ‘shameful sort’ of art. Instead, he did what many before and after him have done in the same situation; he buried the evidence and focused on the more socially acceptable works instead. For Ruskin at least, Turner’s erotica was incompatible with the spiritual genius he saw in his landscapes. Knowing the man he intellectually revered also enjoyed the pleasures of the flesh seriously wobbled the pedestal he had placed Turner upon. And maybe that’s the issue here. Acknowledging an artist’s erotica means acknowledging they are sexual beings – that they are human, like the rest of us.

Thankfully, Turner’s erotica is no longer hushed up and locked away, but is proudly housed in the Tate and freely accessible to the public. Rather than viewing this work as an aberration or as ‘evidence of a failure of mind’, it has allowed us to deepen our understanding of Turner’s life and work. He was most certainly an artistic genius, a man ahead of his time, an inspired visionary – and he also loved getting his leg over, and that’s just fine by me.