Fionn Wilson

On Friday (2nd December) I delivered Christine and the Poisioned Apple (2017) to archivist and collection officer Paul Davidson at Hillingdon Museum and Archives to become part of their art collection. Christine was born at Hillingdon Hospital in 1942. For context, I also gave Paul a ‘Dear Christine’ catalogue and told him more about the exhibition (which ran from 2019-2020), curated by myself, paying tribute to Christine Keeler through painting, poetry, sculpture, film and music. At the museum later next year there will be an exhibition about historical scandals in the borough and the painting will be on display as part of that.

I wrote about this painting in the exhibition catalogue for ‘Dear Christine’ (published May 2019, edited by Fionn Wilson and Rebecca Fairman):

‘Christine and the Poisoned Apple (2017) sees Christine offered a poisoned apple, and the shame of being a ‘whore’ (it’s a bit tricky to read from the image but the label on the apple reads ‘whore’). I’ve also often thought that Christine’s story reads like a fairy tale gone wrong. She ran away to London where the streets were paved with gold and met ‘princes’ who were nothing of the sort. Today magazine in 1963 captioned an image of Christine: “…the enigmatic eyes of a modern Cinderella – with the world at her glass slipper”. The apple and the colours in the painting seem to reference Snow White – Christine in her youth reminds me visually of the Disney character, almost fantastically beautiful.’

Of course, the apple being offered also brings to mind Eve – the mother of humankind – disobedience, forbidden fruit, guilt and the concept of original sin. An apple is also the symbol of Discordianism, a satire religion which centres on Eris, the goddess of chaos.

To me, the feeling you get from the portrait is that Christine has been shamed and the more you look at the painting the more you want to protect her from any more judgment. She was horribly vilified by the press over the years (at the height of the Profumo Affair The Mirror called her ‘a shameless slut’) and never escaped the fallout from the scandal, which haunted her even decades later.

Read more about the campaign to clear Christine Keeler’s name and overturn her unjust perjury conviction at the official Christine Keeler website HERE.

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