5. Walter Keane And The Wide-Eyed Art Fraud
Walter Keane was an American artist who became famous in the 1950s and 1960s for painting a series of widely-reproduced images depicting vulnerable children with enormous eyes. By the early 1960s, the artist’s prints and postcards were selling in the many millions; with the great and the good, including Natalie Wood, Joan Crawford, Dean Martin, Jerry Lewis and Kim Novak buying up the originals. Keane had become an art sensation; the student had become a renowned artist and fulfilled his dream – and with money and fame came power, and a hedonistic lifestyle to suit a film star. But Keane was a fraud. Many years later he was accused of lying, by his wife; the perpetration in question was that the famous artist’s paintings were in fact, her own. In the subsequent slander suit Margaret challenged Keane to a “paint off”, but he declined, citing a sore shoulder. Margaret then painted a work of wide-eyed sentimentality before the jurors in a mere 53 minutes and the suit was settled in her favour for £2.5 million. Read our article here