'Der Venuswagen Vol. II - 'Sappho oder die Lesbierinnen'

Otto Schoff

A collection of erotic etchings by German printmaker and painter Otto Schoff, to illustrate the 1799 sapphic text of French writer Victor-Joseph Etienne de Jouy. The images and text made up the second of nine volumes of illustrated erotic literature compiled by publisher Alfred Richard Meyer (1882 - 1956) at the Fritz Gurlitt Private Press, Berlin.

From University of Birmingham researcher Camilla Smith: "The explicit nature of Der Venuswagen continues in volume two of the series, a story by Victor-Joseph Étienne de Jouy, Sappho oder die Lesbierinnen (Sappho or the Lesbians), about the sexual experiences of three women in Paris, originally written in 1799. It is significant that de Jouy’s text, like four of the other nine volumes, are either set in the eighteenth century or written by authors from that period. The illustrations accompanying de Jouy's Sappho by Otto Schoff reinforce this historical context and depict women caressing, bathing and playfully scolding one another in rococo-like pastoral settings." (Smith, C 2019, 'Sex sells! Wolfgang Gurlitt, erotic print culture and women artists in the Weimar Republic', Art History, vol. 42, no. 4, pp. 780-806. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8365.12460)