The Times from San Mateo, California • Page 24

Situfday, January 11, 1964 Paae 2A. THE TIMES WEEKEND The Keane Story (Sy Jera (jjraii Photos By Ray ZirkeJ The door swings open with a cordial flourish. Introductions are made. There's Rembrandt Gaugin, Degas and Matisse. They come first.

A CORNER glimpse of the famed Keane studio "We always need more room," they sigh. There's Jane, 14, and Susie, 13. And there's Walter and Margaret Keane whose expessive hands give a warm handshake. What's this bit about Rembrandt, Gaugin, Degas and Matisse coming first? They're the Keanes' kids. (The world knows them as miniature French poodles.) Rembrandt, Gaugin.

Degas and Matisse know better, They are Keanes. And they rule the easel. Rembrandt became a mama New Year's Eve and that's why the (two legged) Keanes couldn't go out. They were too busy being midwives. Who are these Keanes? The name familiar? Could well be.

It's one of the most spectacularly familiar names in the art world today. Everyone knows them as the painting couple that paints "those pictures with the big eyes It's an immediately recognizable trademark, and one which has been copied and imitated throughout the world literally by thousands of painters. And why not, for whatever it is, the child image, the huge eloquent eves that say so much, the Keanes' paintings have universal appeal the kind of appeal that within a brief span of some five to 10 years has made this couple one of the most successful painters in the history of art. Their income is in the seven figure bracket. To some (it might just be to some who are less successful), this token of worldly success borders on sacrilege.

Commercial art type stuff, they sniff. After all, aren't all artists supposed to starve in garrets overrun with mice and produce great masterpieces, unsung, unknown, unheralded by the world until they are dead and someone discovers what great painters they were years later? Margaret and Walter Keane have had a very generous helping of heartache, trouble, misery, privation, and wondering when and where the next meal would come from, of hauling down a precious painting to pay a bill. They haven't missed a thing and today, they will happily admit that whether it makes any art critic happy or not, they'd just as soon eat regularly. The Keanes have become a San Francisco institution, and now a Peninsula one since they live in Woodside. liven a cursory reader of art news knows of Walter Keane's decision in 1947 to abandon his highly successful real estate career and devote himself to art; bnw lie offered his first wife the opportunity to join him in his search for his life's wrrk which at the same time meant searching for a purpose and searching for himself.

PAINTING and painter.