Loudon Sainthill (1918-1969). Costume design for Ferdinand in Michael Benthall's 1951 production of The Tempest

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"A particular, dark, glittering, personal magic."

Born in Tasmania in 1918, Loudon Sainthill became an internationally successful artist and sought-after theatre designer. With his life partner Harry Tatlock-Miller – journalist, art critic and early director of London’s Redfern Gallery – Sainthill lived variously in Belgravia, Hampshire, and at Merioola, a Victorian mansion and artist colony in Sydney’s Woollahra, home of the “Sydney Charm School” which included the artists Donald friend and Justin O'Brien.

After an initial period in London in 1939, and a solo exhibition at the Redfern Gallery that year enabled by Basil Burdett, Sainthill and Miller returned to Sydney and remained in Australia throughout the 1940s. On their return to London together in 1949, Robert Helpmann commissioned Sainthill to design the ballet Ile des Sirènes, with Margot Fonteyn. This led to Sainthill’s first major commission for Michael Benthall’s The Tempest at Stratford-on-Avon, the production that marked the beginning of his highly distinguished U.K. career in which he designed roughly four productions a year for such directors as Gielgud, Olivier and Coward. 

Often sombre and unapologetically romantic, Bryan Robertson wrote that “Sainthill’s world was at some point midway between the bones of mortality, classical statuary, blank noon-day sun and ticking-clocks metaphysics of de Chirico, and the more operatic symbolism of Berard and Berman in which melancholic draperies swirl and flutter in deserted but debris-strewn landscapes under a night sky.” It worked, Robertson added, "because of his intense imagination an a particular dark, glittering, personal magic."

Other examples of Sainthill's costume designs for this production of The Tempest are included in the The National Gallery of Australia presented by the Loudon Sainthill Memorial Trust Fund (Chairman Harry Tatlock Miller) in 1981. Sainthill's work is also included in The Victoria and Albert Museum, London; Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney; and National Gallery of Victoria Melbourne.

For a detailed biography see the Australian Dictionary of Biography here


Artist: Loudon Sainthill (1918-1969)
Tile: Costume design for Ferdinand in Michael Benthall's production of The Tempest at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre, Stratford-on-Avon, 1951
Medium: Watercolour and gouache on paper
Date: c.1951
Size: 47.5 x 35 cm (sight size); 71 x 59 cm (framed size)
Signed: lower left
Provenance: Private Collection, U.K.
Stock Number: RB03960

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"A particular, dark, glittering, personal magic."

Born in Tasmania in 1918, Loudon Sainthill became an internationally successful artist and sought-after theatre designer. With his life partner Harry Tatlock-Miller – journalist, art critic and early director of London’s Redfern Gallery – Sainthill lived variously in Belgravia, Hampshire, and at Merioola, a Victorian mansion and artist colony in Sydney’s Woollahra, home of the “Sydney Charm School” which included the artists Donald friend and Justin O'Brien.

After an initial period in London in 1939, and a solo exhibition at the Redfern Gallery that year enabled by Basil Burdett, Sainthill and Miller returned to Sydney and remained in Australia throughout the 1940s. On their return to London together in 1949, Robert Helpmann commissioned Sainthill to design the ballet Ile des Sirènes, with Margot Fonteyn. This led to Sainthill’s first major commission for Michael Benthall’s The Tempest at Stratford-on-Avon, the production that marked the beginning of his highly distinguished U.K. career in which he designed roughly four productions a year for such directors as Gielgud, Olivier and Coward. 

Often sombre and unapologetically romantic, Bryan Robertson wrote that “Sainthill’s world was at some point midway between the bones of mortality, classical statuary, blank noon-day sun and ticking-clocks metaphysics of de Chirico, and the more operatic symbolism of Berard and Berman in which melancholic draperies swirl and flutter in deserted but debris-strewn landscapes under a night sky.” It worked, Robertson added, "because of his intense imagination an a particular dark, glittering, personal magic."

Other examples of Sainthill's costume designs for this production of The Tempest are included in the The National Gallery of Australia presented by the Loudon Sainthill Memorial Trust Fund (Chairman Harry Tatlock Miller) in 1981. Sainthill's work is also included in The Victoria and Albert Museum, London; Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney; and National Gallery of Victoria Melbourne.

For a detailed biography see the Australian Dictionary of Biography here


Artist: Loudon Sainthill (1918-1969)
Tile: Costume design for Ferdinand in Michael Benthall's production of The Tempest at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre, Stratford-on-Avon, 1951
Medium: Watercolour and gouache on paper
Date: c.1951
Size: 47.5 x 35 cm (sight size); 71 x 59 cm (framed size)
Signed: lower left
Provenance: Private Collection, U.K.
Stock Number: RB03960

Enquire

"A particular, dark, glittering, personal magic."

Born in Tasmania in 1918, Loudon Sainthill became an internationally successful artist and sought-after theatre designer. With his life partner Harry Tatlock-Miller – journalist, art critic and early director of London’s Redfern Gallery – Sainthill lived variously in Belgravia, Hampshire, and at Merioola, a Victorian mansion and artist colony in Sydney’s Woollahra, home of the “Sydney Charm School” which included the artists Donald friend and Justin O'Brien.

After an initial period in London in 1939, and a solo exhibition at the Redfern Gallery that year enabled by Basil Burdett, Sainthill and Miller returned to Sydney and remained in Australia throughout the 1940s. On their return to London together in 1949, Robert Helpmann commissioned Sainthill to design the ballet Ile des Sirènes, with Margot Fonteyn. This led to Sainthill’s first major commission for Michael Benthall’s The Tempest at Stratford-on-Avon, the production that marked the beginning of his highly distinguished U.K. career in which he designed roughly four productions a year for such directors as Gielgud, Olivier and Coward. 

Often sombre and unapologetically romantic, Bryan Robertson wrote that “Sainthill’s world was at some point midway between the bones of mortality, classical statuary, blank noon-day sun and ticking-clocks metaphysics of de Chirico, and the more operatic symbolism of Berard and Berman in which melancholic draperies swirl and flutter in deserted but debris-strewn landscapes under a night sky.” It worked, Robertson added, "because of his intense imagination an a particular dark, glittering, personal magic."

Other examples of Sainthill's costume designs for this production of The Tempest are included in the The National Gallery of Australia presented by the Loudon Sainthill Memorial Trust Fund (Chairman Harry Tatlock Miller) in 1981. Sainthill's work is also included in The Victoria and Albert Museum, London; Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney; and National Gallery of Victoria Melbourne.

For a detailed biography see the Australian Dictionary of Biography here


Artist: Loudon Sainthill (1918-1969)
Tile: Costume design for Ferdinand in Michael Benthall's production of The Tempest at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre, Stratford-on-Avon, 1951
Medium: Watercolour and gouache on paper
Date: c.1951
Size: 47.5 x 35 cm (sight size); 71 x 59 cm (framed size)
Signed: lower left
Provenance: Private Collection, U.K.
Stock Number: RB03960