After Woltze: The Irritating Gentleman
A woman in black, a man leaning over the seat with a grin. 1874, and the train has not moved on.
Berthold Woltze · 1874
The original
Berthold Woltze, The Irritating Gentleman, 1874 · Wikimedia Commons
Monica's drawing
Sternum piece: flaming heart, peonies and lilies · Monica, Dark Autumn Studio
On skin
AI visualisation of a real design. Not a photograph of a tattoo.
The painting
Berthold Woltze painted The Irritating Gentleman in Weimar in 1874. A young woman in mourning sits by the compartment window, gloves and a handkerchief in her lap, her bag on the bench. Behind her a man in a grey hat leans over the backrest, cigar in hand, and talks at her. She does not look at him. She looks at us, the way you look for a witness. The painting went around the world as a meme a century and a half later, because nobody needed the title explained.
The design
Monica's sternum piece, the flaming heart with peonies, in the neckline of a black dress. It is the one thing in the scene she chose.
Why this pairing
We move her to a first-class carriage on a modern train. A glass of wine replaces the cigar; everything else is where Woltze left it. The tattoo has nothing to do with him. It was there before he leaned in.
