Visual Arts

The top 10 romantic artworks

By Lucy Scovell on 8/2/2018

From the filthy to the romantic, art celebrating erotic pleasure has thrilled artists and collectors for centuries.
As Sotheby's plays host to the much-anticipated Erotic: Passion & Desire sale next week, we round up 10 of the best romantic artworks celebrating pleasure in the most sensual and provocative ways (leaving pornography aside, of course).
Just in time for Valentine's Day, this selection will make even the most liberal among you hot under the collar. Enjoy.

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Egon Schiele, Women with Black Stocking, 1913

Provocative, radical, scandalous: Egon Schiele. In early 20th-century bohemian Vienna, Schiele challenged convention and form, distorted the body and endeavoured to create the most erotic art on the market – he was later imprisoned for exhibiting pornographic material to minors.

Schiele's bold experimentation with the human form and human sexuality soon attracted Klimt's attention. Taking Schiele under his wing, Klimt mentored the young artist in his early years, even asking Schiele to exhibit with him in the 1909 Vienna Kunstschau exhibition.

Many of Schiele's works caused a sensation, but Women with Black Stockings, 1913, is one of the most entrancing and unambiguously erotic, and therefore our favourite.