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Crying Boy Portrait

gerardwilkie

Gone But Not Forgotten
(ACCOUNT RETIRED)
Joined
Oct 17, 2001
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Back in the late 70s early 80s my aunt and uncle bought a picture of a young boy crying and leaning against a tree. I always hated that picture , but one day they had a chip pan-fire in their flat , and they were told by a friend that it was because of the picture . Apparently the picture was cursed and it was common for a house to go on fire after the owners hung up the picture . At the time that spooked me no end , and needless to say the picture was destroyed in the fire . I had forgotten about this until recently , when my wife told me she saw an item about this picture on This Morning and she remembered me telling her about it years ago . Does anyone else have any experience of this ?
 
It was mass produced then?

How do you curse and entire line of product?


-Fitz
 
Production Line

- Paper Aligner
- Print Coordinator
- Print Quality Supervisor
- Framer
- Dark Magi
- Packer
- Fork Lift Driver
- Delivery Man

Simple.
 
Weren't there similar legends about those (godawful) portraits of kids with big soupy eyes?
 
Frankly, anyone buying those Godsawful, mass produced platters of crud almost demands to be cursed by the bad taste fairy!

This is me, the art critic!
 
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There's a book called "The World's Most Incredible Stories The Best of Fortean Times" that talks about this painting and other things.

"The Crying Boy (TCB) exists in a number of different versions, all of them mass-produced 'paintings'. On 4 September 1985 The Sun reported that there was a jinx on TCBs. A Yorkshire fireman, Peter Hall, was quoted as saying that copies of TCB were frequently found at the scenes of fires, and usually untouched by flames. He and his colleagues were serious about this enough to promise that they would never allow the painting into their own homes. Peter's own brother, Ron Hall, had refused to take the firemen's warning, and while fire damaged the kitchen and living room of Ron's Swallownest, South Yorkshire, home, the TCB on the living-room wall was not harmed. Ron's son put his boot through it in revenge, and his wife banned its replacement."

It goes on from there.
 
It's a class and tastes related issue

The image was common only in underclass and lower middle class homes.

Fatal fires are still much more common in properties where people smoke cigarettes and deep fry food.

PS - I'm guessing that one could draw some similar but different (class and tastes derived) observations about Jack Vetriano prints - which are the modern equivalent of the Crying Boy prints.
 
Dismissing the UL as a 'class and taste' issue is, I fear, a rather shallow assumption to make. There may be some truth in it but it does not add to our understanding of haunted pictures.

I'm sure there wasa general thread about spooky paintings somewhere around here.
 
There may be some truth in it but it does not add to our understanding of haunted pictures.

If there may be some truth to what I've said - then of course it adds to our understanding of this, so called, haunted picture.
 
I too have heard of this phenomenon; if I remember correctly it was covered in a FT book publication a few years back.
I know of people who refused to have the picture in their house because of its association with house fires, I don't blame them - it's a horrid picture :lol:
 
alb said:

It's a class and tastes related issue

The image was common only in underclass and lower middle class homes.


What the heck? Woah! Now if that wasn't a narrow minded statement I don't know what is! :roll:


So gerardwilkie, your Aunt and Uncle actually did have this painting in their home? Did they buy the painting because of the legend surrounding it? I recall a specific painting that my mother painted of a clown. It was actually a painting of an album cover of her then favoritie musician, Leo Sayer. I HATED that painting. It scared me to no end. The album cover itself wasn't scary, but that painting was. I think it's put away somewhere now as I havn't seen it displayed in my parents home for some time.
It's interesting how images such as paintings, etc. can affect children. One of my earliest memories is of flipping through a book and coming across a painting of people being drawn into the pits of Hell. I can remember that painting so clearly! It was quite mesmerising and I recall going back to it over and over for some time.

~Kim~
 
blakta2 said:
alb said:

It's a class and tastes related issue

The image was common only in underclass and lower middle class homes.


What the heck? Woah! Now if that wasn't a narrow minded statement I don't know what is! :roll:

You might not like it. But it's more or less true. Like Elvis mirrors - you'll generally only find certain images in certain homes.
 
Alb- they certainly did have it but didn't know about the legend until after the fire.
 
This legend has made it into computer games (sort of). When I was oh so much younger, I used to play the Sims. In this game, there's a certain picture (of a crying clown, I think), which causes a sort of "bad luck fairy" clown to turn up and never go away (possibly until you get rid of the picture?), causing all sorts of fires and job losses, etc.
 
i have heard this one before, but since you brought it up..... i do believe i wll share it with my mother in law as a fact, and convince her that the dreadful velvet elvis with the neon lights above it will cause her nothing but castrophes until she burns it.
 
The Crying Boy prints were just one example of endless creepy and downright tasteless prints produced in the 1950's - early 1980's (now termed 'kitsch retro' in post-ironic circles) which included a multitude of sinister clowns, large-headed children in paisley attire and sultry brunettes posing topless against trees. The one that beats them all however is a scene involving a huge white swan that is morphing into a sunset over the sea being watched by two naked figures on a type of jetty. Very weird indeed.

When I was very young I remember being fascinated by the famous Tretchikoff green-faced lady prints and have to admit I do now own one of these called The Chinese Lady (they actually fetch good prices these days in collectors' markets!). Bad taste? Maybe. In my teenage years, some friends once related how they had found some paintings of robots in a bin behind some shops and took them home. They then believed their flat to be haunted and underwent some strange experiences that I now forget as I have since put it all down to the strange imaginings of our youth!

On a similar note, several years ago I went to an exhibition that was being held at the ICA in London of 'found art'. These were pieces that the exhibition curator had found in junk shops, yard sales and in waste skips. Quite a few of these anonymous pieces of art featured robots which looked very sinister. One painting in particular stood out for me as verging on the macabre. It looked like it dated from the 1940's or 1950's and depicted a 'production line' of creepy looking robots being assembled. Quite why someone would paint such a detailed scene was beyond me; the size of the painting exludes the theory that this could have been made for a Sci-Fi magazine or other publication as it was just too large I believe. All in all, a very creepy example that could easily fall into the 'Outsider Art' category.
 
Not being funny, but that's a really unpleasant picture.

Anybody actually know who painted, when, and who it was of?
 
The green-faced girl prints were created by a Siberian artist called Vladimir Tretchikoff in the 1950's and they are definately unsettling.

However, this guy made an absolute fortune from these types of print during the height of their popularity but it is unknown who the subject of the painting is. I guess the crying boys were churned out by several jobbing artists for extra cash and many of these are unsigned so we'll never know who actually created these appalling things!
 
It may be unknown who the green faced lady was, but why was she green in the first place? Envy? Very strange picture, and equally strange that it should be so popular.
 
Good question; not sure why the girl should be green but then again did we ask why Salvador Dali fashioned a telephone as a lobster? I believe there is a certain amount of surreality about these types of paintings even if they are themselves not part of the Surrealist school.

For example, what else can one make of 'Wings Of Love', the bizarre painting of a swan and two nude figures I mentioned in an earlier posting. Surreal in the extreme! Check this website for other examples of curious and creepy artworks:

http://www.flying-duck.com/HTMLs/art/wingsoflove.html

http://www.flying-duck.com/HTMLs/art/artproduct.html

The artists responsible for some of these works are given including a few Crying Boy style works. Low Brow they certainly are but definately fascinating.
 
Huckleberry Swamp Hound said:
On a similar note, several years ago I went to an exhibition that was being held at the ICA in London of 'found art'. These were pieces that the exhibition curator had found in junk shops, yard sales and in waste skips.

The Museum of Bad Art works on that principle too. Check out the online collection. Peter the Kitty is my personal *favourite* on there.
 
'Jerez The Clown' is the stand out piece for me; a clown with more murderous intent in his expression than John Wayne Gacy!
 
Exactly what I thought Huckleberry:D

This one is particularly frightening too:

p-pop-portrait-1-lucy.jpg
 
the now defunct athena poster shop used to sell these types of posters

(id liked going in there to look at them :D )
 
There's still a few Athena's around the country, but they're independent these days - and try to be a little more mass market...

The crying boy painting wigs me out... :shock:
 
The crying boy portrait was done by some guy called J.Bragolino . Apparently it the picture of an orphan in Spain , who in real life died in a car crash shortly after the painting was completed .Check out this weird website :

http://www.quasimondo.com/archives/...e anyone to download the image as wallpaper ?
 
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