A rare original painting by Cambridge resident and founder of Pink Floyd, Roger ‘Syd’ Barrett, will be offered for sale at the Cheffins Art & Design Sale on 27th May.
Titled ‘Orange Dahlias in a Vase,’ the watercolour and pastel picture is being sold by the family of Barrett’s school art teacher, Gerald Harden. Signed ‘R. Barrett. / Oct. 1961’, the picture has an estimate of £3,000 - £5,000, and was painted when he was 15 years old.
Syd Barrett began his secondary education at Cambridgeshire High School for Boys in 1956, where he was taught art by Gerald Arthur Clement Harden to whom he gifted this painting before he left the school to study art at Cambridgeshire College of Arts and Technology. He went on to enrol at Camberwell Art School in 1964 where he proved to be a talented artist, before joining the band which would later become known as Pink Floyd in 1965. After leaving Pink Floyd, Syd Barrett returned to Cambridge in 1975, where he lived a solitary life and returned to concentrating on his artwork.
Following his death in 2006, Cheffins sold the contents of Barrett’s home in Cambridge at no.6 St Margaret’s Square, where he had lived since 1981.
Philip Harden, Gerald Harden’s son and the current owner of the picture, says: “I used to go and visit Roger on a regular basis and I even remember playing cowboys and Indians and watching the first Doctor Who shows with him and Roger Waters back in the 1960s. They both went off to art college and disappeared from my life and the next time I saw them they were Pink Floyd. Roger Barrett was a kind and thoughtful person, with a joyful and almost childlike wit and humour. He was a great fun person to be around in those early days and he was incredibly creative, and would often be seen painting for hours on end. I remember my father bringing this picture back home after Roger had given it to him, it had been put up on the wall in the classroom and my father kept it as part of his portfolio. It has something incredibly special about it and I would recognise it immediately as his style at the time, he was a very gifted artist. We have decided to sell it as it has been in storage for some years now and we feel it is time for someone else to enjoy it. We know that Roger Barrett became a worldwide phenomenon; he stood for so many things in different people’s minds, and we think there must be someone amongst his army of fans who could really treasure it.”
Brett Tryner, Director at Cheffins says: “Syd Barrett remains one of the greatest icons in the world of rock music, and while he is foremost known as the founder of Pink Floyd, he was also a talented and accomplished artist. Although the pictures from his later life have been well-publicised, this present lot is a window into the artwork of his earlier days, before he went on to create the band which changed the world of music throughout the sixties. There are few original pictures by Syd Barrett still in existence, especially as during the later years he took to finishing a painting, photographing it and then burning the canvas. The picture on offer at this sale therefore presents a rare opportunity to purchase a painting from Barrett’s early days and is bound to be of special significance for his legions of fans both in Cambridge and from further afield.”
Nine of Syd Barrett’s later paintings raised £121,000 at the Cheffins auction in 2006, with the proceeds being given to fund art training in Cambridge.
30 artworks by Syd Barrett were exhibited in Cambridge in 2011 as part of The City Wakes, a series of events hosted in the city in tribute to him.
To view the lot click here.
Auction: The Art & Design Sale – 27th May 2021 from 11am
Location: Cheffins, Clifton House, 1-2 Clifton Road, Cambridge, UK, CB1 7EA
Ends
For further information, please contact Sophie Richardson, PR Manager at Cheffins,
t: 01223 271990, e: Sophie.richardson@cheffins.co.uk, www.cheffins.co.uk