16 Facts About Loudon Sainthill

Loudon Sainthill was an Australian artist and stage and costume designer.

Loudon Sainthill worked predominantly in the United Kingdom, where he died.

Loudon Sainthill was born Loudon St Hill, the second of four children, in Hobart, Tasmania, but by the age of two his family had moved to Melbourne.

Loudon Sainthill had a natural interest in drawing and painting, and was attracted to quality live performance.

Loudon Sainthill painted some of the dancers and designed some sets for the ballets.

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Loudon Sainthill was approached to design Serge Lifar's Icare, but although Sidney Nolan was given the commission, Sainthill's consolation prize was being invited to London with the company.

Loudon Sainthill designed the costume for Nina Verchinina's character in the farewell performance by the Ballet Russe in Melbourne in September 1940, the ballet Dithyramb, to music by Margaret Sutherland.

In 1954, when Marc Chagall suddenly withdrew from the project, Loudon Sainthill was engaged at short notice to design the sets and costumes for Robert Helpmann's production of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov's opera Le Coq d'Or at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden.

Kenneth Tynan was profoundly impressed, not just with Roberto Gerhard's music but with Loudon Sainthill's set design, which he called "pictorially magnificent, a restless Oriental kaleidoscope …".

Loudon Sainthill designed the musicals Half a Sixpence and Canterbury Tales.

Loudon Sainthill was nominated in the same category in 1966 for The Right Honourable Gentleman.

Loudon Sainthill designed over 50 major productions in all, up to four in a year, for directors such as Gielgud, Olivier, Helpmann, Richardson, Noel Coward, Joseph Losey and Wolf Mankowitz.

Loudon Sainthill was a visiting teacher of stage design at the Central School of Arts and Crafts, London in the mid-1960s.

Loudon Sainthill had just completed this work when on 10 June 1969 he died of a heart attack at Westminster Hospital; he was buried at Ropley.

Loudon Sainthill's work is held in the National Gallery of Australia, in many state and regional collections in Australia, and in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

Loudon Sainthill's papers were donated to the National Gallery of Australia by Harry Tatlock Miller in 1989.