Sid Vicious' Softer Side Seen In Auctioned Paintings

He has been immortalized as punk's confrontational icon, but a collection of previously unseen paintings by Sex Pistol Sid Vicious show flowers and sunsets, rather than safety pins and swastikas.

Drawn and painted when he was 16, the surreal sketches and still lives were probably coursework provided by Vicious, then known as John Ritchie, when he studied at Hackney College of Further Education, East London, in the 1970s.

Now up for auction, the Sid Vicious' Book of Artwork could fetch £4,000 ($6,520). It also features a handwritten list of favourite songs, including Jimmy Ruffin's 'It's Wonderful (To Be Loved by You)' and 'Ride a White Swan' by unlikely punk icons T-Rex.

Ritchie died of a heroin overdose in 1979, after which his mum, Ann Beverley, kept the pictures until she passed away in 1996. The Sex Pistols bassist's biographer Alan Parker has long pointed out his sneering was mainly a front, so the book provides additional evidence that Ritchie had a softer side.

"He didn't stand out as a troublemaker -- the only distinguishing thing was that he was probably considered a talented artist," Parker t told The Independent. "I think he was a sweeter guy underneath it all, even later in his life, but as with a lot of people you have to scratch away the veneer to find it."