Have you heard of this cursed painting?

Question

Have you heard of the painting "The Crying Boy". There is a history behind it and anyone who has a copy of the painting becomes cursed. Usually their house burns down. Does anyone know the full story and have you heard of it?

Answer 1

The Crying Boy is a mass-produced print of a painting by Spanish painter Bruno Amadio, also known as Bragolin, that was popular in Britain in the 1980s. He is also known as Franchot Seville, Giovanni Bragolin, and J. Bragolin, is the supposed creator of a group of paintings known as Crying Boys. The paintings, which feature a variety of tearful children looking morosely straight ahead, are sometimes believed, in the fashion of an urban legend, to be cursed. Often they are the target of the popular myth that a particular picture will cause one's house to burn down.There does not seem to be a coherent biography of Bragolin, although tradition makes him SevillianOn September 4, 1985, the British tabloid newspaper The Sun reported that a fireman from Yorkshire was claiming that undamaged copies of the painting were frequently found amidst the ruins of burned houses. He stated that no firefighter would allow a copy of the painting into his own house. Over the next few months, The Sun and other tabloids ran several articles on house fires suffered by people who had owned the painting. (Since house fires are by no means uncommon, and since a not insignificant portion of the British population owned a copy of The Crying Boy, it was to be expected that the two would often coincide.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Crying_Boy
http://www.cryingboyfanclub.nl/

Answer 2

The legend around this painting is as grim as it gets. The stories began around 1985, when several mysterious fires occurred all around England. When the debris was sifted through the only item that remained un-charred was a painting of a little boy with a tear rolling his cheek in every fire.