About

Elderly Woman Copying Painting is an exploitable image macro series and reaction image depicting an old woman recreating a painting in a museum as she stands directly in front of the original. It’s typically used as a reaction image or an object labeling macro to mock attempts at copying something.

Origin

The original photograph used in the meme was taken by a man named “Fox” who goes by u/faceater on Reddit, where he first uploaded it. In a direct message correspondence with Know Your Meme, Fox stated that he captured the image while on vacation in France. The museum shown in the background is the Louvre located in Paris, and the painting is “Saint Mary Magdalene” by Flemish painter Quentin Matsys, who is perhaps best known for “The Ugly Duchess” that has also been used in memes.^[1]

According to Fox, the woman painting is an art teacher who was granted special permission from the museum to do a recreation. When asked about the photo, Fox said, “I wanted to take the photo but the painting is so accurate. Like she is doing the most amazing job and I wanted to share that with the world.”

Fox first uploaded the photograph to r/MildlyInteresting^[2] on January 26th, 2020, where it received nearly 9,000 upvotes and 130 comments before it was removed by moderators. The first time the image was used as a meme comes roughly six hours after the original post when u/moleman73 created his version and posted it to r/Memes.^[3] The post (shown below) then garnered over 51,000 upvotes and almost 200 comments, as well as several Reddit awards.

Spread

After the initial spread within Reddit on January 26th, 2020, the uncaptioned photo also spread to 4chan^[4] that night where an anonymous user uploaded it to the /tv/ Television & Film board with the title, “don’t mind me, just pirating this painting.”

On January 27th, the photo was reposted to r/FakeHistoryPorn with the title “Invention of piracy [circa 1980] and then again to r/PsBattles where users created a multitude of variations (one can be seen here).^[5]

Another meme variant of the image spread to Reddit on January 28th when u/zerojonah uploaded their version to r/Memes,^[6] which went on to get over 31,000 upvotes and 145 comments. Reddit user u/PUSSAYYSLAYER posted another example to r/Memes^[7] January 29th, which received 11,000 upvotes and an award.

On Twitter,^[8] the image continued to spread where it was used by user Telmo Goncalves to create a meme about programming. His tweet received over a hundred retweets and 232 likes. Twitter^[9] user Mark Dalgleish then tweeted his own version on January 28th, garnering 185 retweets and over 1,000 likes.

Examples

Template

Search Interest

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External References