The name Paul-Émile Bécat (1885–1960) carries a hush of reverence among collectors of the fine book illustration and all the passionate devotees of the erotic art. His etchings, produced in the golden age of illustrated literature, stand at a rare threshold between sensuality and refinement, between the urgency of physical desire and the delicacy of aesthetic contemplation. Their elegant spirit brings to mind the Rococo love frivolities, at once tender and naughty. Where many erotic artists lapsed into crudity or sensationalism, Bécat maintained a meticulous elegance: his line is quick yet assured, his shadows tremble with softness and his figures of lovers exist in a space that is intimate rather than pornographic. His works are whispers rather than shouts, yet in those whispers entire universes of erotic truth unfold.
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Fig.2 The Fifth Kiss
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Subtleties of a Brow
Bécat began his career as a portraitist, and this early training would have a crucial role in shaping his sensibility. The etcher’s hand that captured the subtleties of a brow, the quiver of lips, the half-averted glance, turned later to bodies in their most vulnerable moments, but always with that same precision, that same psychological depth. Unlike other illustrators of his era who leaned on caricature or exaggeration, Bécat never distorted the body into grotesque or idealised forms. Alright, perhaps at times his female figures are idealised, but only in a subtle way. Mostly he allowed flesh to breathe on the page, human in its imperfections and alive in its curves.
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Postures of Abandon
In his erotic etchings, particularly those created for the clandestine editions of writers like Pierre Louÿs, Verlaine, or Diderot, Bécat approached sexuality as something both timeless and immediate. His lovers are often shown in postures of abandon: entwined, reclining, the contours of their thighs and torsos melting into one another. Let us take a look, for example, at the lovers in Fig.3., Fig.9. and Fig.10., how beautifully their bodies are meeting together in various ways. Bécat masters sensuality beautifully indeed. But he always avoids sensational details. Instead, he emphasises the mood in the artwork: the shadows around a bed, the drape of a sheet, the cascade of the woman’s long wavy golden hair across a shoulder as is the case in Fig.1. Desire is not presented as spectacle but as interiority, as a private world glimpsed through the half-open curtain.
Fig.9 Paul Emile Becat, The Embrace, 1947
Fig.10 Cupid and Psyche
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