Were the big-eye paintings really as popular as they are in the movie? She wanted to leave him then but didn't know how she would support her daughter. She attempted to instruct him, but says 'it was just impossible.' Walter told her she wasn't teaching him right. In order to appease Margaret and make up for his lie, the real Walter Keane asked her to teach him how to paint the big-eyed children. The movie implies that Walter never tried to paint himself. I lost all respect for him and myself, and lived in a nightmare.' -SFGate While we were fighting this out at home, the paintings were just flying off the walls. 'Back then, women kind of went along with their husbands, didn't rock the boat,' Margaret says. I stayed home painting a lot of children with different city backgrounds. People already think I painted the big eyes and if I suddenly say it was you, it'll be confusing and people will start suing us.' -The GuardianĪs to why she didn't sell the paintings herself, Margaret told LIFE Magazine in 1970, 'Every night Walter went down to sell the paintings at a San Francisco night spot called The Hungry i.

People don't want to think I can't paint and need to have my wife paint. People are more likely to buy a painting if they think they're talking to the artist. Margaret says that Walter told her, 'We need the money. When Margaret Keane discovered Walter was taking credit for her paintings that he was selling at The Hungry i beatnik club, they were two years into their marriage and had been happy until that point. Why did Margaret Keane go along with the lie?

And they just got bigger and bigger and bigger.' -SFGate 'When I'm doing a portrait, the eyes are the most expressive part of the face. 'Children do have big eyes,' says Margaret. In the movie, Amy Adams character reasons that she paints the eyes big because the 'eyes are the windows to the soul,' a sentiment that the real Margaret Keane has echoed herself. 'I was actually putting my own feelings into that child I was painting' ( Big Eyes Featurette). 'Those sad children were really my own deep feelings that I couldn't express in any other way,' said Margaret Keane in a 2014 interview with The Guardian. What inspired Margaret Keane to paint the big-eyed waifs? Christoph Waltz (center) as Keane in the Big Eyes movie. Walter Keane (right) promotes his lie on the Merv Griffin show in 1966.

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