Sainthill was the only Australian designer employed by the company for the tours the other two were British.
At the height of Sainthill’s success in England, his designs were brought back to Australia when the Old Vic Theatre Company toured Shakespearean plays in 19. The plan to move permanently to London came to fruition in 1949, and Sainthill was soon regarded as “one of Australia’s greatest cultural exports.” His name regularly appeared alongside opera singer Joan Sutherland and ballet dancer Robert Helpmann in Australian newspaper articles reporting on the triumph of creative expatriates working in London in the 1950s. During the initial stages, Wirth’s Park had been selected as a site for the venue, but sadly Sainthill would not live to see it realized.Ĭlerk of Oxford costume, Canterbury Tales (1967) Sainthill and his business and life partner Harry Tatlock Miller were active supporters of the plan for a large performing arts centre in Melbourne, which arose around the time of the separation of the National Gallery of Victoria and Museum and State Library boards in 1945. The dominant theatrical production company at the time was J C Williamson Theatres Ltd, but costume and scenery designs were in most cases acquired contractually with shows purchased from the United Kingdom or the United States of America? These designs were then realized by local contracted scenic artists and wardrobe staff. Opportunities for independent designers in Australia in the 1940s were limited, and during his early career, Sainthill was one of a number of Australian artists who struggled to make a living from designing for the stage. Later that year Sainthill returned to Australia in charge of a major exhibition of theatre and ballet designs which toured the country coinciding with the ballet season. An exhibition of his paintings featuring the dancers and sets led to an invitation to travel to London with the company in 1939. His choice of career came about because he was inspired by the Australian tours of Colonel de Basil’s Ballet Russes de Monte Carlo in 1936-39. Loudon Sainthill (1918-1969) was born in Hobart on the Australian island of Tasmania his family moved to Melbourne when he was a child. His success in London was a testimony to his enduring enthusiasm that he first demonstrated in Australia for this work.” In his biography of Sainthill, art historian Andrew Montana wrote: “… it was creating décor and costumes for the stage that drove Sainthill. At the time, hardly any visual artists designing for Australian theatre productions were well paid, and even fewer secured long-term residencies in theatres. During the previous decade, Sainthill had worked to establish himself as an artist and costume and décor designer in Sydney and Melbourne. In 1948 Loudon Sainthill lamented to a journalist from Sydney newspaper The Sun that there were “no opportunities for a designer in Australia” and this was why he would be going abroad in a few months’ time. Kathleen Ashby on the Australian theatre designer Loudon Sainthill Ashby graduated with a Master of Art Curatorship from the University of Melbourne in 2015 and currently works at The Johnston Collection, a museum of fine and decorative art located in East Melbourne. Kathleen Ashby, Assistant Curator at Arts Centre Melbourne when she wrote this article introduces the gifted designer to a modern readership through an analysis of a suite of Sainthill’s costume designs recently acquired by the Australian Performing Arts Collection. After permanently relocating to London in 1949, he collaborated with renowned directors including John Gielgud, Laurence Olivier and Noël Coward at theatres such as London’s Haymarket, the Savoy and the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. He designed both sets and costumes for the theatre, and his paintings were regularly exhibited in a number of commercial galleries in Australia and the UK. Loudon Sainthill (1918-1969) was an Australian artist and designer who worked in London from 1949 to 1969.
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