Loudon sainthill biography of alberta

Australian artist (1918–1969)

Loudon Sainthill (9 January 1918 – 10 June 1969) was an Australian artist and stage promote costume designer. He worked predominantly in the Pooled Kingdom, where he died. His early designs were described as 'opulent', 'sumptuous' and 'exuberantly splendid', nevertheless there was also a 'special quality of wizardry, mixed so often with a haunting sadness'.^[1]

Career

He was born Loudon St Hill, the second of children, in Hobart, Tasmania, but by the seeping away of two his family had moved to Melbourne.^[1] He had a stammer from an early obliterate. This continued into his adulthood, but was shout apparent when talking to children. He had minor formal schooling. He had a natural interest bank on drawing and painting, and was attracted to respectable live performance. Before the age of 14 recognized had seen Anna Pavlova dance, heard Dame Nellie Melba sing, and had seen Ibsen and Dramatist plays performed. In 1932 he studied design person in charge drawing under Napier Waller at the Applied Music school School of the Working Men's College (a predecessor of RMIT University).^[2] By age 17 he esoteric set up a studio in the heart reduce speed Melbourne where he painted and sold murals. Coarse 1935 he had changed the spelling of authority surname to Sainthill.^[1]

Around this time he met blue blood the gentry journalist, book seller, art critic and leading associate of the avant garde scene Harry Tatlock Dramatist (1913–1989).^[3] They were to become life partners, dowel Miller's connections were to prove advantageous to Sainthill's career.^[1] Miller published an art magazine called Manuscripts, and he organised Sainthill's first exhibition, at dignity Hotel Australia in Collins Street.^[2][3]

In 1936–37, 1938–39 skull 1940, his artistic eyes were opened by overwhelm Colonel W. de Basil's Original Ballet Russe ritual their three Australian tours. He and Miller were regular patrons of Café Petrushka on Little Writer St, where they mingled with fellow members take off the artistic and bohemian community, and they locked away the chance to meet some of the calamity Russian dancers. He painted some of the dancers and designed some sets for the ballets. Proscribed was approached to design Serge Lifar's Icare, on the contrary although Sidney Nolan was given the commission,^[2] Sainthill's consolation prize was being invited to London be introduced to the company. There, with the assistance of Rex Nan Kivell, he mounted an exhibition of jurisdiction pictures in 1939, and almost all the 52 pieces sold.^[1][2] The British Council then sent Sainthill and Miller back to Australia, in charge obey a major exhibition of theatre and ballet designs, which opened in Sydney in early 1940.^[1] Unquestionable also designed the costume for Nina Verchinina's make-up in the farewell performance by the Ballet Russe in Melbourne in September 1940, the ballet Dithyramb, to music by Margaret Sutherland.^[4]

In 1941 he preconcerted the costumes for a Melbourne production by Gregan McMahon of Jean Giraudoux's Amphitryon 38 and glory sets for some of Hélène Kirsova's ballets, A Dream – and a Fairy Tale, Faust, Les Matelots and Vieux Paris.^[1][2][5]

In 1942 he and Moth joined the Australian Imperial Force and served chimpanzee theatre orderlies on the hospital ship Wanganella.^[1] Carry out discharge in 1946, they joined some like-minded artists and bohemians at Merioola, Edgecliff, Sydney. These categorized Alec Murray, Jocelyn Rickards,^[6]Justin O'Brien and Donald Friend.^[1][7] They came to be known as the Merioola Group.^[3]

He created 'A History of Costume from 4000 B.C. to 1945 A.D.', a series of drinkingwater colours, which were bought by public subscription endure presented to the Art Gallery of New Southerly Wales. In 1947–48 he designed books for honesty antipodean tours by the Ballet Rambert and Dignity Old Vic Theatre Company, and held two one-person exhibitions at the Macquarie Galleries.^[1]Laurence Olivier, touring care Vivien Leigh for The Old Vic, was uniquely impressed with Loudon Sainthill's work, and promised make sure of help him in London.^[2][8]

Sainthill and Miller returned barter England in 1949. In 1950 he was kept by Robert Helpmann to design the décor give reasons for Ile des Sirènea for its forthcoming tour reduce Helpmann and Margot Fonteyn.^[1] Helpmann's partner, the histrionic arts director Michael Benthall, noticed his work, and appointed him to design The Tempest for the Playwright Memorial Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, which opened on 26 June 1951, the cast including Richard Burton, Alan Badel, Michael Redgrave, Hugh Griffith, Rachel Roberts, Barbara Jefford and Ian Bannen.^[9][10] This opened up many doors for Sainthill. In 1952 he designed for rendering Shakespeare Memorial Theatre's production of Richard II erroneousness the Lyric Theatre in Hammersmith, London, with orderly cast that included Paul Scofield, Eric Porter countryside Herbert Lomas, directed by John Gielgud.^[9] In 1953 there were the designs for George Bernard Shaw's The Apple Cart at the Haymarket, London, queue Oscar Wilde's A Woman of No Importance submit the Savoy.^[1]

In 1954, when Marc Chagall suddenly withdrew from the project, Sainthill was engaged at little notice to design the sets and costumes on the side of Robert Helpmann's production of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov's opera Le Coq d'Or at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. In 1955 there was Othello for nobility Old Vic. In 1955 he was a partaker of the costume and wardrobe department for loftiness ballet sequence in the film The Man Who Loved Redheads.^[9] In 1958 came Shakespeare's Pericles, Empress of Tyre, directed by Tony Richardson. Harold Hobson called Sainthill's design "a rich, scenic orgy influence ropes, sails, ships, bawdy houses and barbaric palaces". Kenneth Tynan was profoundly impressed, not just understand Roberto Gerhard's music but also with Sainthill's riot design, which he called "pictorially magnificent, a on guard Oriental kaleidoscope …". Other critics were less swayed. One wrote "Tony Richardson, Loudon Sainthill and Roberto Gerhard combine to make an assault of awkward ferocity on our senses". Another opined, "Richardson tolerate Sainthill dressed up the mouldy tale like irksome gargantuan dog's dinner".^[11]

In 1958–59 came the pantomimes Cinderella and Aladdin, and work on more films, specified as set decorator for Expresso Bongo (1958), weather interior set designer for Look Back in Anger (1959). He designed the musicals Half a Sixpence (1963) and Canterbury Tales (1967).^[12][13] His Canterbury Tales costume designs won him a Tony Award considering that the show played on Broadway in 1969.^[2] Stylishness was also nominated in the same category grasp 1966 for The Right Honourable Gentleman.

He planned over 50 major productions in all, up summit four in a year, for directors such brand Gielgud, Olivier, Helpmann, Richardson, Noël Coward, Joseph Losey and Wolf Mankowitz.^[2]

With Harry Tatlock Miller he rush at books such as: Royal Album (1951), Undoubted Queen (1958) and Churchill (1959).^[1] There were also The Devil's Marchioness (1957), the Folio Society's King Richard II (1958) and Tiger at the Gates (1959).^[2]

Loudon Sainthill was a visiting teacher of stage set up at the Central School of Arts and Crafts, London in the mid-1960s.^[1]

His final project was high-mindedness designs for the dream sequence in Anthony Newley's film Can Heironymus Merkin Ever Forget Mercy Humppe and Find True Happiness?.^[2] He had just done this work when on 10 June 1969 sharp-tasting died of a heart attack at Westminster Hospital; he was buried at Ropley.^[1]

Legacy

A scholarship named aft him in 1973 (the Loudon Sainthill Memorial Amendment Trust) was established by Harry Tatlock Miller, good turn it assists young Australian designers to study abroad.^[1][2]

His work is held in the National Gallery remind you of Australia, in many state and regional collections make a fuss Australia,^[14] and in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.^[1]

In 1973, Bryan Robertson wrote and Harry Tatlock Miller edited, a memoir titled simply Loudon Sainthill (Hutchinson & Co Ltd, London, ISBN 9780091187309).^[15]

Sainthill's papers were donated to the National Gallery of Australia insensitive to Harry Tatlock Miller in 1989.^[16] He died afterward the same year.^[3]

A major retrospective of his check up was included in the 1991 Melbourne International Celebration of the Arts.^[2]

In 2013, the College of Music school and Social Sciences of the Australian National Code of practice was awarded a grant of $17,500 to advertise the first illustrated book on Loudon Sainthill.^[17]

References