17 Facts About Walter Keane

Walter Stanley Keane was an American plagiarist who became famous in the 1960s as the claimed painter of a series of widely reproduced paintings depicting vulnerable subjects with enormous eyes.

When she told her side of the story, Walter Keane retaliated with a USA Today article that again claimed he had done the work.

Walter Keane was born in Lincoln, Nebraska, on October 7,1915, one of 10 children from his father's second marriage.

Walter Keane grew up near the center of Lincoln and made money by selling shoes.

Walter Keane moved to Berkeley, California, in the 1940s with his wife, Barbara, and went into real estate; both were real estate brokers.

Barbara Walter Keane later became head of her own department in dress design at the University of California, Berkeley.

Walter Keane subsequently closed both his real estate firm and the toy company in order to work full-time on his painting.

At a fairground in 1953, Walter Keane met an artist making charcoal sketches, Margaret Ulbrich.

Walter Keane married his third wife, Joan Mervin, after divorcing Margaret in 1965.

Walter Keane died at the age of 85 in Encinitas, California on December 27,2000.

Walter Keane first displayed Margaret's paintings as his own work in 1957, at an outdoor art show in Washington Square in Manhattan.

From 1959 to 1965, Walter Keane had an art gallery in New York in addition to his main gallery in San Francisco.

In 1965, Walter Keane was named "one of the most controversial and most successful painters at work today".

In 1970, Margaret Walter Keane announced on a radio broadcast that she was the real creator of the paintings.

The Keanes continued to dispute the paintings' origin, and after Walter suggested that Margaret claimed she was the painter only because she believed he was dead, she sued him in federal court for slander.

At the hearing, the judge ordered both Margaret and Walter Keane to create a big-eyed child painting in the courtroom.

Walter Keane declined to paint before the court, citing a sore shoulder, whereas Margaret completed her painting in 53 minutes.