Margaret Keane Passes Away

Margaret Keane, who has died aged 94, was one of the world’s most popular artists. Her paintings of children whose big eyes seemed to express a fearful innocence and vulnerability were so popular that they were hung in museums and galleries across the world, generated endless publicity and spawned an industry of countless reproductions. At the height of her success, in the mid-1960s, they also engendered a spirited debate as to whether this work, denounced by critics, could even be counted as art at all.

Yet it is a different controversy for which she may be remembered, which is, that her husband Walter Keane fraudulently took artistic credit, while she painted for 16 hours a day to satisfy demand for the work, originally presented publicly as a joint effort, and always signed simply “Keane”. Margaret’s role was progressively diminished, and her claim to being the actual creator was not decided until more than three decades later, after Walter backed out of a judge-ordered “paint-off”. This was the story at the heart of Tim Burton’s 2014 film Big Eyes, in which Margaret and Walter were played by Amy Adams and Christoph Waltz.

Margaret met Walter, a smooth-talking real estate salesman and amateur painter, in a cafe in San Francisco’s bohemian North Beach in 1955, and they married the same year. He began selling her work, which got noticed at the Hungry I, a popular comedy club, and by 1957 he was travelling to sell the paintings in New Orleans, Chicago and New York, and promoting them as his own.

In a 2014 Times interview, Keane admitted to lacking the “sense” or “courage” to stand up to her husband, yet, she had good reason to be afraid of him. In court, she testified that Walter threatened her life and the life of her daughter (from her previous marriage) if she told anyone the truth.

In the end, the question of who painted those big-eyed characters was put to rest in a Honolulu court in 1986 where Keane and Walter faced each other in a paint-off. Keane managed to produce a work, Walter didn’t.

Though critics derided Keane’s work, her paintings and story have captured the world’s interest time and time again.