gentlemen's pictures

Refers to paintings, photographs, or art in other media in which the subject is a female nude in a suggestive pose or other erotica. It generally refers specifically to pictures dating from the 17th through 19th centuries in Western art, when such pictures would have typically been displayed in a smoking room, study, or other domestic room frequented primarily by men. The female subjects commonly assumed traditional poses known from older, more traditional art, such as the reclining nude originally depicted in iconography of the mythological characters Venus or Diana.