Margaret Keane
American artist (1927–2022)
Margaret D. H. Keane (born Margaret 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. The artwork was originally attributed to Keane's then-husband, Walter Keane. Soon after their divorce in the 1960s, Margaret claimed credit, which was established after a courtroom "paint-off" in Hawaii, in which Walter refused to participate.
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."
Early life
Margaret 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, one 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.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Margaret Keane” as american artist (1927–2022). Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the people & ideas register because the source frames it as american artist (1927–2022). Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 19, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5402192. VIAF identifies the subject as 125096410. The Library of Congress control number is no2015052019. 3 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1927, 2022 and 2014.
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This entry incorporates text from “Margaret Keane” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.