7 Works by Margaret Keane You Should Know

Margaret Keane was one of the most popular artists of the twentieth century, even though the world did not know her name for more than a decade of her career. Her husband, Walter Keane, was an American celebrity, favored by collectors and art lovers, and deeply despised by critics and curators. Little did the public know that the real painter behind the popular images of sad big-eyed children was not Walter, but his wife Margaret. After a dramatic and highly publicized court trial, Margaret Keane was accepted as the one and only artist in the family and even inspired a film by Tim Burton. Read on to learn more about Margaret Keane and her most famous works.

Margaret Keane, born Peggy Doris Hawkins, entered the world in Tennessee into a middle-class family of conservative Methodists. The information on her background is scarce and limited for several reasons. Keane herself preferred to focus on the years of her artistic career instead of her past, and her ex-husband, Walter Keane, bitter and broke after the authorship court case, deliberately spread misinformation about her background, attempting to belittle and humiliate her.

We certainly know that Keane’s interest in art grew from her sickly childhood. She was isolated from others, so she entertained herself with drawing and painting. According to Keane, she created her first oil painting at the age of ten. The image depicting two girls, one crying and one laughing, offered a glimpse into her future style. During her teenage years, Keane studied art history and attended art classes, further developing her skills.

1. Worried

According to Margaret Keane, her obsession with eyes started from a young age. During a surgery, a doctor injured her eardrum when Keane was just two years old, damaging her hearing ability. Unable to hear properly, she paid attention to people’s eyes, relying on them as the principal source of information.

In the late 1940s, Margaret Keane got married to Frank Ulbrich, a California resident. For several years, Margaret focused on being a housewife, resorting to painting as a hobby. Her signature style started to develop with the birth of her daughter Jane. She noticed how different the infant’s facial proportions were from those of adults, particularly when it came to her eyes. She decided to emphasize them further, enlarging Jane’s eyes in her sketches. The marriage to Ulbrich did not last for too long but gave Keane enough time and space to form her artistic inclinations.

After her divorce, Margaret Keane earned a living by decorating furniture and painting portraits on the streets. On one such occasion during the 1954 San Francisco Art Festival she met an alleged fellow artist. Walter Keane was a charming and talkative man selling paintings of European streets made with the bold strokes of a palette knife. As it later turned out, those paintings were not made by Walter.

Walter Keane’s version of their meeting was widely different. According to his memoir, in 1955 he was already exhibiting his paintings showing big-eyed children when an insecure and mentally unstable Margaret convinced him to accept her as an apprentice and his lover.

The truth was, Walter Keane never knew how to paint, but had a dream of becoming a great artist, taking shortcuts along the way. Soon, he married Margaret, and at least for the initial several years, they were quite happy together.

Starting as a promoter of his wife’s art, Walter gradually took over. It was too late when Margaret realized that he was taking full credit for her work. At first, Walter made excuses claiming that the public would not take the works of a woman seriously, but he soon turned to violence. Margaret spent the following decade locked up in her studio for up to sixteen hours a day painting, while Walter partied with art dealers and appeared on television.

3. No Dogs Allowed

Margaret Keane’s painting style became widely popular amongst the newly emerging American middle class that resided in the suburbs. These people required simple, understandable, yet original art to decorate their homes with, and had little interest in hyper-intellectualized forms of art such as Abstract Expressionism or Minimalism. Keane’s works were touching, aesthetically pleasing, and emotional. Walter Keane was a smart businessman. Noticing how popular Margaret’s paintings were he began selling prints, a practice which was not so common in the 1960s.

The Stray was one of the signature paintings of Margaret Keane, with a recurring motif of a child holding a scared animal in their arms. This concept became the core idea of Walter Keane’s myth of artistic inspiration. In his interviews, he spoke of his military service in Europe during and after World War II. Allegedly, Keane saw the dirty, starving, and abandoned children on the streets of Berlin and Paris, desperately clinging to stray kittens and dogs. Although there is no doubt that Europe had enough homeless orphans at the time, there is no record of Keane’s service. Some historians even doubt the idea he ever visited Europe. To fuel Walter’s tear-jerking tales of tortured children, Margaret produced painting after painting, with hair colors, skin tones, and pets changing to different tastes.

Walter Keane’s audacity and ambition knew no limits. Through his connections, he managed to win a commission for the 1964-65 World Fair. Keane announced that the painting would feature children of all cultures and races. Walter was triumphant, bragging about his new project on TV.

However, the big-eyed paintings were despised by the majority of art world professionals and museum curators, with Walter’s bravado ridiculed and parodied. The sentimental kitsch of crying children clinging to their pets made little impact on the minds of those acquainted with more complex and sophisticated art forms. One of such opponents was the art critic John Canaday. In his article on Tomorrow Forever, Canaday stated that since the painting had 100 children on it, it was a “hundred times worse than an average Keane.” Scandalized, the World Fair committee canceled the installation of the painting.

5. Flowers of Old Hawaii

By the mid-1960s, Margaret Keane finally gathered enough courage to leave her husband. She moved to Hawaii with her daughter and continued to paint for Walter, still afraid of his possible connections with the mafia and his revengeful spirit. During this period, her works became more cheerful, and often featured elements of Hawaiian flora and fauna.

In 1970 she appeared on the radio and publicly called out Walter, telling listeners that she was the only artist behind the big-eyed paintings. Public opinion was divided, with many art lovers still favoring Walter’s side of the story. Several media outlets tried to arrange a paint-off between the two Keanes, but Walter never showed up. Instead, he tried to accuse Margaret of arranging a robbery of his home, claiming that only his ex-wife knew where he kept the money.

The culmination of the Keane drama happened in 1986 when Margaret finally decided to file a lawsuit against Walter. The trial was a performance on its own since Walter chose to represent himself. To stop the long and loud bickering and endless insults thrown at each other by the ex-partners, the judge ordered both Keanes to paint a big-eyed child right in the courtroom.

Margaret completed her painting in 53 minutes, while Walter never touched the canvas, claiming he had a sore shoulder. Later, court psychologists stated Walter most likely suffered from delusional disorder, a condition that forces the patient to develop beliefs completely disconnected from reality, sometimes even fabricating proof of them. If the diagnosis was right, Walter Keane was truly convinced of his authorship, and could not admit otherwise despite all the evidence.

7. Margaret Keane After Walter: Eyes Upon You

After all her legal troubles were solved Margaret returned to painting full-time. She was finally accepted as an independent artist. Years of anxiety and stress resulted in her profound interest in spiritual matters. She studied astrology, numerology, and meditation, joined Jehova’s Witnesses, and promoted their ideas to her fans. According to Keane, it took her years to realize the true depth of the drama she was involved in. The 2014 film Big Eyes by Tim Burton, starring Amy Adams and Christoph Waltz as Margaret and Walter Keane, became one of the pivotal moments for her, helping the artist truly come to peace with her story.

Margaret Keane passed away in 2022, leaving behind hundreds of paintings, a questionable reputation, and the astonishing story of art and crime. Despite criticism, some public voices spoke in favor of Keane’s art. Among them was Andy Warhol, the leading artist of Pop Art, who frequently blended high and low cultures. Warhol thought that if so many people liked Keane’s art, it could not be as bad as described by the critics.