Happy memories of the 1960s come flooding back looking at this amazing Sven Berlin portrait Guy in Hippy Gear. Those bell bottoms!
Berlin’s portrait Guy in Hippy Gear is a tour de force of the 1960s. Its decorative flamboyance sums up the glorious and decadent atmosphere of the time.
Guy Robinson was a friend of Berlin and Juanita’s son, Jasper, and had a job as a ‘bin man’. Berlin had persuaded him to pose and to don his most colourful clothes, seating him in the large and ornate chair which was usually reserved for famous guests.
“Berlin thought the finished painting resembled an 18th century poet, seated majestically on Berlin’s frequently painted Victorian wooden chair, his double-breasted decorative coat, multi-coloured bell-bottom trousers, limp hands and drooping moustache completing the bohemian effect.” (from Timeless Man)
Berlin, who had published his book Jonah’s Dream - ‘a meditation on fishing’-
in 1964 recommended Guy to his fishing friend and keeper Tim Baker, and Robinson later became a celebrated keeper himself on the River Test (eels and salmon).