Born in Pennsylvania, the American sculptor and painter Keith Haring (1958-1990) became during the Eighties one of the best-known creators of New York’s “East Village”. He avoided the elitism of the galleries by his public works in the inner city: graffiti in the subways and his “Radiant Child” in lights in Times Square which was to become his trade-mark, a simple line-drawing that could have been made with a magic marker, surrounded by the halo of lines always used in comic strips to indicate surprise or amazement. Haring described himself modestly as a “twentieth-century image-maker”. He is also, with his blend of comedy and tragedy, a poet of our time.

His design for the 1988 Mouton Rothschild vintage is a satirical version of the Dancing Rams theme, perhaps also making an ironic reference to Mouton Rothschild’s official coat of arms.