Young Brunette Girl With A Red Necklace Reveals Her Pubic Hair Landing Strip On The Bed

By the 17th century, suggestions of female pubic hair appear in pornographic engravings, such as those by Agostino Carracci. By the late 18th century female pubic hair is openly portrayed in Japanese shunga (erotica), especially in the ukiyo-e tradition. Hokusai's picture The Dream of the Fisherman's Wife (1814), depicting a woman having an erotic fantasy, is a well-known example. Fine art paintings and sculpture created before the 20th century in the Western tradition usually depicted women without pubic hair or a visible vulva.
According to John Ruskin's biographer Mary Lutyens, the notable author, artist, and art critic was apparently accustomed only to the hairless nudes portrayed unrealistically in art, never having seen a naked woman before his wedding night. He was allegedly so shocked by his discovery of his wife Effie's pubic hair that he rejected her, and the marriage was later legally annulled. He is supposed to have thought his wife was freakish and deformed. Later writers have often followed Lutyens and repeated this version of events. For example Gene Weingarten in his book I'm with Stupid (2004) writes that "Ruskin had the marriage annulled because he was horrified to behold upon his bride a thatch of hair, rough and wild, similar to a man's. He thought her a monster." However, there is no proof for this, and some disagree. Peter Fuller in his book Theoria: Art and the Absence of Grace writes, "It has been said that he was frightened on the wedding night by the sight of his wife's pubic hair; more probably, he was perturbed by her menstrual blood." Ruskin's biographers Tim Hilton and John Batchelor also believe that menstruation is the more likely explanation."
Francisco Goya's The Nude Maja (1797) has been considered as probably the first European painting to show woman's pubic hair, though others had hinted at it. The painting was considered quite pornographic at the time.
Gustave Courbet's L’Origine du monde (The Origin of the World, 1866), was considered scandalous because it showed the exposed female genitals in their totality with thick hair. Examples of male pubic hair in contemporary art are harder to find.