The Crying Boy Painting
Some say there is no accounting for bad taste...but what about haunted taste? Why one would desire a picture of a crying toddler hanging in their house is beyond me...but, many people in England during the 1980s had a picture that is now known as ‘The Crying Boy’ painting hanging in their homes. However, strange things seemed to happen around this painting, even prints, and soon The Sun broke one of the strangest stories about an equally strange image.
Although the crying boy paintings existed, likely, before 1985, that is when they entered the cultural consciousness. In September 1985, Ron and May Hall’s home in Rotherham caught fire. Most of the downstairs was destroyed or, at the very least burned. However, a print of the crying boy which was hanging downstairs remained completely unscathed by the flames.
The homeowner’s brother, Peter Hall, further stoked the strange fire when he reported this was not the first untouched crying boy painting he had come across. Hall was a firefighter and claimed that he had come across several fires where the only unaffected item was a print of the crying boy.
Who had painted these strange crying children...and why were they seemingly so impervious to flames?
After The Sun story came out, along with the reports of the other crying boy paintings impervious to flames, people began throwing out their similarly described paintings en masse. Why Well, some believed that the paintings were cursed and were the reasons behind the fires. If the paintings could not start the fires, it was said they acted out in other ways such as bringing bad luck to the home. Some even reported seeing movement within the painting, along with short bursts of poltergeist-like activity around the area where the painting was hung.
For some time it was difficult to track down the artist behind these seemingly cursed paintings. However, they were finally tracked down to a Giovanni Bragolin, whose name was inscribed on several of the paintings. Not much was known about Bragolin, which further fueled the rumors spreading about his paintings.
However, in 1995 a high school teacher named George Mallory claimed that the man behind the paintings was Franchot Seville. It was said that Seville had painted a young boy named Don Bonillo. Don had allegedly started a fire in Spain that had killed his parents. From this moment on, Don was cursed and it was said a fire followed him wherever he went. He soon gained the nickname Diablo. However, there seems to be little proof to this rumor.
Other theories claim that the boy was crying about something horrific, such as a loss, abuse, or other kind of significant trauma and that imbued the painting, which captured this moment of grief, with a strange curse.
A more skeptical theory is that the crying boy mass-produced prints may have been treated with a very strong fire repellant that has since fallen out of use, was proprietary knowledge, or perhaps was illegal some way in its makeup. This would help explain why no one came forward.
Whether or not this particular run of paintings were cursed or not may up for debate, but the effect the story had is not. Although these paintings were plentiful and cheap decor in the 1980s, but the 1990s they had all but disappeared and seemingly production had ceased. Some who are curious may find one lurking in the back of an antique store or second hand shop. But are you willing to risk a fire to satisfy your curiosity?
Thanks to Vicki F for this blogstonishing suggestion!
The above image is from flickr user MarLeah Cole and is licensed under Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0)