The Crying Boy Painting

[JonRB]

When i was a kid we had a painting in the front room and i think it was called The Crying Boy. My Mam always said that every council house had this painting in the 70's and that it was taken down because it was cursed and if you kept it your house would burn down. The Beautiful South used the painting and adapted it for the cover of their album Blue Is The Colour. Who is the painting by? Where can i get a copy? and was it true about houses burning down that owned this painting. Cheers.

[jno]

http://www.theanswerbank.co.uk/History-and-Myths/Question146252.html

[tali122]

i remember this getting lots of coverage first in The Sun- initially i thought it was tabloid excess but the stories got rather alarming and frequent and inexplicable

[logman]

It seems to have been Firemen that first noticed these regular occurrances, which someone put forward an explanation after some extensive research

Apparently a large majority of people affected by the "curse" were from poor working class backgrounds,often of Irish origins, and the common factor was they all were heavy smokers and drinkers who dozed off while smoking