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.
