Loudon Sainthill

Bio

Loudon Sainthill (1918–1969) was a costume and stage designer born in Hobart, Tasmania. Although Sainthill designed for the stage in Australia it wasn’t until he moved to England that his career flourished. Between 1932–33 he studied drawing and design at the Applied Art School, Working Men’s College in Melbourne, Australia. Around this time Sainthill made a living by painting murals in a surrealist style. During this period, he met his lifelong partner Harry Karl Tatlock Miller, a journalist and later an art critic and expert on paintings and antiques. Santhill’s growing interest in theatre and costume design was spurred by the Australian tours (1936–37 and 1938–39) of Colonel de Basil's Ballets Russes de Monte Carlo. An exhibition of his paintings of the dancers led to an invitation to return to London with the company. After the war, Sainthill and Miller lived at Merioola, Edgecliff with a group of painters who included Alec Murray, Jocelyn Rickards, Justin O'Brien and Donald Friend.

Returning to England he would go on to design sets and costumes for Michael Benthall's 1951 production of The Tempest at Stratford-upon-Avon establishing him as a leading designer. Sainthill's work encompassed opera, notably Rimsky-Korsakov's Le Coq d'Or at Covent Garden in 1954, Shakespeare, pantomimes, musicals and revues, and although he became associated with a flamboyant and opulent fantastical style of design, he could also create an everyday reality, as demonstrated by his interiors for the film version of John Osborne's play, Look Back in Anger. His drawings and sketches are held in state collections around Australia including the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra and the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, as well as in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

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