Gaston Noury
~ 1866 - 1936
Born in 1866 in the Norman textile town of Elbeuf, Gaston Noury grew up among Impressionist whispers: his grandfather founded the local museum and welcomed Pissarro, Renoir, Monet, and Degas. From Le Havre’s salt air he carried a lifelong love of light and line. By 1889 he was in Paris, training under Félix-Auguste Clément, designing posters for Les Maîtres de l’Affiche, and dressing Moulin Rouge dancers in scandalous petals of fabric that bared thigh, midriff, and décolletage.
He contributed illustrations to numerous periodicals, including La Chronique Parisienne, Saint-Nicolas, Gil Blas illustré, Journal amusant (1889–1890), Sans Gene, and Les Hommes d’aujourd’hui. He painted postcards by the hundred: fairies, mermaids, fashion plates, each a pastel wink sold in Collection des Cent sets. His advertisements for perfumes and fans glowed on every kiosk.
Yet behind the cabaret sparkle, Noury kept a darker studio. Between 1904 and 1925, under his own name and in perfect secrecy, he supplied the clandestine littérature flagellante with more than a dozen volumes of exquisite torment.
For publishers like Librairie Artistique et du Fin de Siècle he drew black-and-white plates where women in silk and sternness wielded crops and canes over arched backs and trembling thighs. Each book a whispered confession of pain turned to pleasure.
Art Nouveau curves became the arc of a raised arm; soft pastels hardened into the glint of a buckle. Censorship demanded anonymity, but Noury’s monogram: delicate, unmistakable betrayed him to the cognoscenti.
He died in 1936 in Le Havre after a long illness, buried beside his parents in the cimetière Sainte-Marie.
His respectable posters still hang in museums; his forbidden plates surface only in hushed auctions and the locked drawers of vintage bdsm collectors.
Books with bdsm illustrations by Noury
- Nouvelles galantes d'un évêque d'Agen (1904) - not presented in gallery
- Le Masochisme en Amérique (1905)
- Les batteuses d'hommes (1906)
- Flagellantes et Flagellées (1908)
- Les Mystères de la flagellation (1910) - also art from Heffa/Heffay
- Les Cinglades voluptueuses (1910)
- Les Cinglades passionnées (1911) - not presented in gallery
- Les Cinglades mortelles (1912) - not presented in gallery
- Le Fouet (Roman cinglant) (1914)
- Miss Dean (1914)
- Fouetteurs & fouettés (1904 or 1920)
- La Voluptueuse Souffrance (1925)
- Some covers from books illustrated by Gaston Noury were done by M. Jacquette.
11 albums/79 artworks
Latest Update: March 23, 2025 -> Added Les batteuses d'hommes (12 artworks)
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