Loudon Sainthill

Loudon Sainthill (9 January 191810 June 1969) was an Australian artist and stage and costume designer. He worked predominantly in the United Kingdom, where he died. His early designs were described as 'opulent', 'sumptuous' and 'exuberantly splendid', but there was also a 'special quality of enchantment, mixed so often with a haunting sadness'.

Career He 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. By age 17 he had set up a studio in the heart of Melbourne where he painted and sold murals. By 1935 he had changed the spelling of his surname to Sainthill. They were to become life partners, and Miller's connections were to prove advantageous to Sainthill's career.

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

In 1942 he and Miller joined the Australian Imperial Force and served as theatre orderlies on the hospital ship Wanganella. Justin O'Brien and Donald Friend. They came to be known as the Merioola Group.

Sainthill and Miller returned to England in 1949. In 1950 he was engaged by Robert Helpmann to design the décor for Ile des Sirènea for its forthcoming tour with Helpmann and Margot Fonteyn. This opened up many doors for Sainthill. In 1952 he designed for the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre's production of Richard II at the Lyric Theatre in Hammersmith, London, with a cast that included Paul Scofield, Eric Porter and Herbert Lomas, directed by John Gielgud. In 1958 came Shakespeare's Pericles, Prince of Tyre, directed by Tony Richardson. Harold Hobson called Sainthill's design "a rich, scenic orgy of ropes, sails, ships, bawdy houses and barbaric palaces". Kenneth Tynan was profoundly impressed, not just with Roberto Gerhard's music but also with Sainthill's set design, which he called "pictorially magnificent, a restless Oriental kaleidoscope …". Other critics were less impressed. One wrote "Tony Richardson, Loudon Sainthill and Roberto Gerhard combine to make an assault of barbaric ferocity on our senses". Another opined, "Richardson and Sainthill dressed up the mouldy tale like some gargantuan dog's dinner".

In 1958–59 came the pantomimes Cinderella and Aladdin, and work on more films, such as set decorator for Expresso Bongo (1958), and interior set designer for Look Back in Anger (1959). He designed the musicals Half a Sixpence (1963) and Canterbury Tales (1967). His Canterbury Tales costume designs won him a Tony Award when the show played on Broadway in 1969. and in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

Sainthill's papers were donated to the National Gallery of Australia by Harry Tatlock Miller in 1989. He died later the same year.