The Irritating Gentleman

About

The Irritating Gentleman is a painting by 19th-century German painter and portrait artist Berthold Woltze. The painting depicts a man evidently attempting to flirt with a woman in a train car while the woman, apparently crying, appears entirely uninterested while looking out at the viewer. It has seen in use in the 21st century as a meme parodying men explaining things to disinterested women, similar to Milk Edinburgh.

Origin

"The Irritating Gentleman" was painted by Berthold Woltze in 1874 (shown below). It began being spread online as early as 2012. On October 22nd, 2012, the painting was posted to the Tumblr page fleurdulys, where it gained over 177,000 notes.^[2]

Spread

In reblogs of fleudulys' Tumblr post, users commented on how the emotion portrayed by the image was still relatable over a century later. User werelesbian posted an edit where the woman was captioned #FML (shown below).

On October 15th, 2014. the painting appeared on /r/justneckbeardthings,^[1] where it gained over 190 points. In the comments section of the post, commenters pointed out that it was likely the woman in the painting was in mourning, as she is crying and dressed in all-black. It was posted again to /r/Art two years later, on August 19th, 2016, where it gained over 17,000 points.^[3]

The popularity of that post correlates with the earliest jokes on Twitter which used the painting as a reaction image paired with humorous captions of what the man might be saying. For example, a tweet by rbp77 posted September 29th, 2016 gained over 238 retweets and 370 likes (shown below, left). Twitter user @AlistairColeman uses the image mocking men who correct women's Twitter jokes on January 9th, 2018 (shown below, right).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References