Margaret Keane

Margaret D. H. Keane (born Peggy Doris Hawkins, September 15, 1927 – June 26, 2022) was an American artist known for her paintings of subjects with big eyes.

She mainly painted women, children, or animals in oil or mixed media.

The work achieved commercial success through inexpensive reproductions on prints, plates, and cups.

It has been critically acclaimed but also criticized as formulaic and cliché.

The artwork was originally attributed to Keane's then-husband, Walter Keane.

Peggy Doris Hawkins was born elder of the two children of David Hawkins and Jessie (McBurnett) Hawkins on September 15, 1927, in Nashville, Tennessee.

When she was two, her eardrum was permanently damaged during a mastoid operation.

Unable to hear properly, she learned to watch the eyes of the person talking to her to understand them.

She and her brother David studied in public schools.

Keane started drawing as a child, and at age 10 she took classes at the Watkins Institute in Nashville.

Keane painted her first oil painting of two little girls, one crying and one laughing, when she was 10 years old and gave the painting to her grandmother.

At age 18 she attended the Traphagen School of Design in New York City for a year.

He would later tell reporters, however, that he had given up his "highly successful real estate career" in 1947.

Margaret found him "Suave, gregarious and charming."

She began work painting clothing and baby cribs in the 1950s until she finally began a career painting portraits.

Early on, Margaret began experimenting in kitsch.

She worked in both acrylic and oil-based paints, with the subject of her artwork limited to women, children, and familiar animals (cats, dogs, horses).

Some time in the mid-1950s, Margaret, married with a child, met Walter Keane.

As Walter Keane told the story when he was at the height of his popularity, he saw her sitting alone at a well known North Beach bistro and he was attracted by her large eyes.

At the time Walter was also married, worked as a real estate salesman and painted on the side.

The two married in 1955 in Honolulu.

Margaret said that he began selling her characteristic "big eyes" paintings immediately, but unknown to her, claimed it was his own work.

A principal venue for his sales was the hungry i, a jazz club in San Francisco.

When she discovered his deception, she remained silent.

She later explained her behavior: "I was afraid of him because he [threatened] to have me done in if I said anything."

Margaret even publicly acknowledged him as the artist, while later claiming it was "tortuous" for her.

She rationalized the situation on the ground that "[a]t least they were being shown."

In 1957 Walter began exhibiting the "big eyes" paintings as his own.

In February the work was shown on a wall of the Bank of America in Sausalito.

He took nine paintings to New Orleans, which he claimed to have sold during Mardi Gras.

That summer Walter arranged for a showing at the Washington Square Park Outdoor Art show in New York City.

Displaying his talent for promotion, during that trip he arranged for a showing in August at the Sheraton Hotel in Chicago and another in a small East Side gallery for the same month.

Walter began developing a myth about himself and to a lesser extent Margaret.

He eventually began promotions of "The Painting Keanes."

Andy Warhol said "I think what Keane has done is just terrific. It has to be good. If it were bad, so many people wouldn't like it."

Soon after their divorce in the 1960s, Margaret claimed credit, which was established after a court "paint-off" in Hawaii.

A large painting commissioned for the 1964-65 World's Fair had a procession of doe-eyed waifs from the horizon to the foreground, where they lined up on a staircase.

A resurgence of interest in Margaret Keane's work followed the release of Tim Burton's 2014 biopic Big Eyes.

She maintained a gallery in San Francisco which boasts "the largest collection of Margaret Keane's art in the entire world."

In light of the great gulf between her work's popularity and its critical lampooning, she was sometimes referred to as the "Wayne Newton of the art world."