Margaret Keane

Margaret DH Keane , née Peggy Doris Hawkins (* 1927 in Nashville , Tennessee ) is an American painter who is known for her pictures of women, children and animals with big eyes. In the 1960s, her husband Walter Keane became prominent by pretending to be the painter of her pictures.

Life

Margaret Keane was born in Tennessee. In her parish there, she was known early on for her sketches of angels with big eyes and drooping wings.

In 1955 she married Walter Keane, who contributed to the popularity of her paintings through his sales talent and his contacts with prominent people in the Bay Area . In the early 1960s, he sold her work under his own name by passing it off as his own. The paintings of melancholy children with large, round eyes became extremely popular, even if they did not gain much recognition in the art world. By her own account, Margaret initially did not know that Walter passed the pictures off as his own. When she found out, she only agreed to continue the deception because she felt trapped in the marriage.

On November 1, 1964, she left him and moved from San Francisco to Hawaii, where she met sports journalist Dan McGuire. She divorced Walter Keane in 1965 and married McGuire in 1970. That year she announced on a radio broadcast that she had painted the pictures herself, which had previously been ascribed to her husband. Several interviews and newspaper reports followed, in which both Margaret and Walter claimed authorship for the paintings. During a libel trial that took place in 1986, the judge asked both of them to make a painting each during the ongoing trial. Margaret created a painting showing the typical features of her art in less than an hour. Walter cited a shoulder injury that made him unable to paint. After a three-week trial, the jury awarded her $ 4 million in damages . In 1990, a federal court upheld the defamation judgment, but overturned the claim for damages. Walter Keane died in 2000.

Keane currently (2015) lives in Napa County , California .

Works

The pictures by Keanes, which she created in the shadow of her husband, mainly depict sad-looking children in a dark environment. A special feature are their doll-like, disproportionately enlarged eyes. After she left her husband and became a Jehovah's Witness in Hawaii , her painting style became brighter. Keane's website today advertises the representation with "tears of happiness and joy".

Actresses Joan Crawford and Natalie Wood were portrayed by Keane. In the 1990s, American director and producer Tim Burton , who is a collector of Margaret Keane's paintings, ordered a picture of his then girlfriend Lisa Marie from her .

Media presence

In Woody Allen's 1973 comedy The Sleeper , Keane is described as one of the greatest female artists in American history. Matthew Sweets 1999 album In Reverse features one of her oil paintings on the album cover. In 2014, Keane and her former husband Walter were the focus of the biographical film Big Eyes by Tim Burton, in which Margaret is played by Amy Adams .

Exhibitions

2000: Solo exhibition at the Laguna Art Museum in Laguna Beach (California)

Web links

• Information about Margaret Keane on the Laguna Museum website
• Official collector's gallery of Copper State Design
• Ask Art
• Transcribed excerpt from Awake! Magazine dated July 8, 1975, reposted by Megan Besmirched
• Keane Eyes Gallery

Individual evidence

1. ^ ^{A b c} Jon Ronson: The big-eyed children: the extraordinary story of an epic art fraud. The Guardian, October 26, 2014, accessed May 6, 2015 . 
2. ↑ James S. Kunen: Margaret Keane's Artful Case Proves That She — and Not Her Ex-Husband — made Waifs. People Online, June 23, 1986; accessed May 6, 2015 . 
3. ↑ " My life as a well-known painter ", Awake ! , October 22, 1975.
4. ↑ Jeff Stratton: Matthew Sweet . February 2, 2000.
5. ↑ Harvey Weinstein Praises 'Big Eyes' Screenwriters-Producers at Film's Premiere .
6. ^ Laguna Art Museum: Museum Celebrates the Release of Big Eyes with Special Price on Margaret Keane Book. (No longer available online.) December 26, 2014, archived from the original on April 30, 2015 ; accessed on May 6, 2015 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.