A series of Victorian(?) sneeze paintings

[Wig_Powder]

A few days ago, the thought occurred to me that there had to have been some painters back in the past that had painted pictures that involved people sneezing. Not because they shared our kink, but just because it's a natural part of life that someone would end up capturing. I knew I'd seen a few before, but I decided to make a concentrated effort to look for them. So I put "sneeze portrait" into Google to see what came up. And I stumbled across something quite surprising indeed...

It turns out that an artist named Louis Charles Moeller (1855–1930), painted not one, not two, but three pictures centered around sneezing, to the point where the word "sneeze" is in the title. What's more, maybe this is just my fetishy brain speaking, but he also painted several pictures where handkerchiefs are prominently on display, as if it's going to be used in the near future.

I'm not saying that Moeller was one of us, but it is curious that he ended up with three unquestionable sneeze paintings and several more that hint in that direction. Then again, based on my perusal of his work, he seemed to have themes he liked to revisit (notice how three of the handkerchief paintings have both a similar layout and a similar title), so maybe he just enjoyed the challenge of painting the lead-in to a sneeze. No matter what the reason, though, it was a fun thing to come across decades after the fact.

[kiku]

@Wig_Powder Thanks for sharing those amazing paintings! Wow, they look so realistic... 👍

[allergyboy2001]

What a great find. Thank you very much.

The sneeze portraits appear to be about snuff-taking? But they aren’t labeled that way so it was very smart to search for “sneezing.”

The others are mysterious. 🙂

Edited October 25, 2023 by allergyboy2001