![]() Williamson’s in Australia: Sail Away (sets and costumes, 1963), Half a Sixpence (costumes, 1967) and Canterbury Tales (costumes, 1969). Three of the musicals he designed were reproduced by J.C. He even recreated the rich flamboyance of British music hall for a series of nostalgic shows at the Prince Edward Theatre. From then on Sainthill designed an average of four productions a year – opera, dance, drama, revue, pantomime, musicals, films – for directors such as John Gielgud, Laurence Olivier, Noel Coward, Tony Richardson, Joseph Losey, Wolf Mankowitz and Robert Helpmann – nearly 50 major projects. This led to Sainthill’s first major commission, Michael Benthall’s production of The Tempest at Stratford-upon-Avon. There Robert Helpmann commissioned Sainthill todesign the ballet Ile des Sirènes, which he and Margot Fonteyn took on tour. Sainthill and Miller returned to Britain in 1949. Laurence Olivier was particularly impressed with Sainthill’s work, and promised to help him in London. Sainthill designed the printed material for the Australian tours of the Ballet Rambert (1947-1949) and the Old Vic (1948). These were later purchased for the Gallery by public subscription. Sainthill exhibited at Macquarie Galleries and created 39 designs for the exhibition A History of Costume from 4000 BC to 1945 AD at the Art Gallery of New South Wales. On their discharge they were adopted by the artistic community at ‘Merioola’ in Edgecliff, Sydney. In 1943 Sainthill and Miller joined the Royal Australian Army Medical Corps, serving as orderlies on the hospital ship Wanganella. In 1941 Sainthill designed one of Gregan McMahon’s last productions, Giradoux’s Amphytrion ’38, at the Comedy Theatre, and several ballets for Hélène Kirsova: A Dream – and a Fairy Tale, Faust, Les Matelots, and Vieux Paris. The studies Sainthill painted of the dancers during the voyage were exhibited at Rex Nan Kivell’s Redfern Gallery in London and virtually sold out.Īfter the outbreak of war, Sainthill and Miller returned to Melbourne in charge of a major British Council exhibition of theatre and ballet design. Nevertheless, Sainthill and Miller were ‘adopted’ by the Russians and sailed with them when they returned to London in May 1939. Sainthill was approached to design Serge Lifar’s Icare, but the commission went to Sidney Nolan. Miller organised Sainthill’s first exhibition, at the Hotel Australia in Collins Street.Īlong with most of Melbourne’s bohemians, Sainthill and Miller were regulars at Minka Wolman Veal’s cosy Café Petrushka at 144 Little Collins Street, where they mixed with members of the visiting Russian ballet companies. He opted for the surname ‘Sainthill’ and moved from home to live with Harry Tatlock Miller, a journalist and editor and publisher of an art magazine called Manuscripts. The 1936 visit of Colonel de Basil’s Ballet Russe, with its exotic sets and costumes, had a great impact on young Loudon. The fleur-de-lis emblems on the first-floor windows of the Prince of Wales Hotel in St Kilda are the only surviving evidence of his work in this field. This led to a much-hated job with a firm specialising in sandblasting glass. ![]() He studied drawing and design under Napier Waller at the Applied Art School at what was then the Working Men’s College – today’s RMIT University. Loudon St Hill was born in Hobart, Tasmania, on 9 January 1919, but moved to Melbourne with his family when he was two. One of the most imaginative theatre designers of his time was the son of a bookie. It worked, what he did, simply because of his intense imagination and a particular dark, glittering personal magic that he could invoke with everything he touched and which was completely personal.’ What is curious is the strong impact and total individuality of his theatrical décor and costume design, for Sainthill came at the end of a tradition and did not begin a new one. ‘That he achieved true greatness in his elected field is not at all surprising,’ wrote influential British gallery curator Bryan Robertson, ‘given the imaginative force of his initial gifts as an artist.
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