Margaret Keane

Walter Stanley Keane (October 7, 1915 – December 27, 2000) was an American plagiarist who became famous in the 1950s for claiming he had painted a series of widely-reproduced paintings depicting vulnerable waifs with enormous eyes.

Background
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Walter Keane was born in Lincoln, Nebraska, in October 7, 1915, one of 10 children from his father's second marriage. His mother, Alma, was from Denmark; and his father, William R. Keane, was of Irish descent.

Barbara Keane later became head of her own department in dress design at the University of California in Berkeley. Walter Keane subsequently closed his Berkeley, California real estate firm and the toy company, in order to devote full-time to his painting. Their marriage ended in divorce in 1952. At a fairgrounds in 1953, Walter met an artist doing charcoal sketches; her name was Margaret (Doris Hawkins) Ulbrich. She was married to Frank Ulbrich and had one daughter, Jane Ulbrich. Margaret and Frank later divorced, and Margaret married Walter Keane in Honolulu, Hawaii, in 1955. A federal appeals court upheld the verdict of defamation in 1990 but overturned the $4 million damage award.

Keane was 85 when he died on December 27, 2000 in Encinitas, California.