French postcards – The naughty victorian nude
Well, it’s no wonder that around the time the camera was invented, around the 1830s, the naked girl came along. And so, in my opinion, the pin-up girl was born! At first, these “pin up” photos of Victorian nudes were called artists’ models and were sold primarily for that purpose. However, it didn’t take long for Victorian gentlemen to catch on, and there you have it, vintage eroticism was born.
You could say that pin up art had its beginnings much earlier, as artists have depicted the idealized female nude in painting and sculpture for hundreds of years. That may be a matter of opinion.
However, there is no doubt that by the time the camera appeared, these nude Victorian ladies were no longer ethereal goddesses and allegorical figures. They were contemporary women, often staring at the viewer and wearing contemporary clothes and lingerie. This was very scandalous! Suddenly, the viewer got this intimate peek through the keyhole at scantily clad real pin-up girls!
The French began exploiting this new idea of pin-up photography early on and began mass-producing these vintage erotic nudes. They were never actually mailed, however they were called postcards because of their convenient size. They were sold and collected in sets. Already in the civil war, soldiers were caught with these risky daguerreotypes of girls.
Additionally, many Parisian prostitutes during this era would make postcards with images of themselves and use the postcards as advertisements for their services.
The heyday of sexy French postcard art was roughly from 1900 to the 1920s, and tourists from all over the world were returning from France with these naughty souvenirs, this vintage pinup photograph!
