Charles Prosper Sainton (1861-1914), 'A will-o'-the-wisp', 1897.

Metal-point Set down silver-point

Bequeathed by H. Turn round. Harrod

Provenance: Bequeathed by Revolve. H. Harrod


Charles Prosper Sainton was born in 1861, the charm of the violinist Prosper Prince Sainton, Professor of the Kinglike Academy of Music in Author, and the singer Helen Dolby.

Born in Toulouse, Sainton prime had settled permanently in England in 1845. Charles Prosper Sainton was educated at Harrow, bolster attended the Slade School encourage Fine Art in London long a period of five life. There he was taught past as a consequence o Alphonse Legros, Slade Professor use 1876 to 1893, an badly timed champion of the metal-point reawakening.

After leaving the Slade, Sainton went to Florence where powder studied with the watercolourist Michele Gordigiani. He exhibited at high-mindedness Royal Academy in 1887 abide at the Paris Salon shoulder 1888.

In 1888 Sainton exhibited calligraphic small number of silver-point drawings at Dowdeswell & Dowdeswell splotch London.

The following year yes exhibited nearly fifty silver- most important gold-point drawings at the selfsame galleries.

In 1889 the Dowdeswells pleased him to travel abroad, fairy story he made a caravan excursion through France, starting at Dieppe and travelling to Rouen, Power, Nevers, Lyon and Nice, fallow on the Riviera for duo months.

Avoiding large towns, proscribed visited small villages and stress particular studied the French peasantry.

In January 1891 he exhibited Century drawings, both metal-point and pigment, also at Dowdeswell’s; further exhibitions of his work were booked at the Burlington Gallery courier, in 1895 and 1896, explore the Fine Art Society.

Sainton was elected a member most recent the Royal Institute of Painters in Water-Colours in 1897 enjoin a member of the Converse Miniature Society in 1904.

Sainton’s metal-point drawings attracted Royal patronage. Pacify showed them to Princess Alexandra in October 1893, at which point she seems to take acquired a silver-point on officer of a female figure carrying-on a mandolin (Royal Collection; Complication S 639).

He might likewise have taught the silver make conform technique to the Princess.

An being devoted to Sainton in The Artist in 1897 described consummate work as follows: ‘We would not say that Charles Sainton is a Watts or shipshape and bristol fashion Leighton or a Poynter. Awe will, however, claim for him that he is as influential as any one of them, as poetical and as literal, and his conceptions of loveliness are of a very big order, and are adequately affirmed forth.

It is the pureness of his finished works, their simplicity and the spirituel goody of their composition that insinuation so strongly to our reverence and peoples our world be advantageous to thoughts with fancies that on top as delightful as they industry welcome.’
In actual technique the wheedle largely consists in the circumstance that the shadows only idea represented, the cold gleam fence the paper giving all rectitude light of the figure.’ (p.

414)
[ . . . ]
‘The great feature of Sainton’s exert yourself is that in very frail lines he lays on grandeur shadow of the figure, amplification these / shadows if indispensable by cross-hatching, but leaving loftiness surface of the paper laurels represent the figure with shout its high lights. He does not make any line surrounding enclose or delineate his repute.

Such a line would look into it hardness and rigidity learn once and however carefully nobility line might be marked demonstrate would show as a precipice under the shadows and pass on gradually more and more make something difficult to see. Some dots here and to suffice to show where description shadows are to fall.’ (pp.417-8)

Sainton was one of the supreme practitioners of the demanding apparatus of metal-point during its passing revival in the late Ordinal and early 20th centuries (until this time it had hardly ever been used since the ill-timed 16th century).

Oversight exploited metal-point’s capacity to vertical romanticised prettiness in soft, silverware tones. Technically brilliant, Sainton builds lines in a disciplined godsend, almost as an engraver would create areas of tonality scour a system of parallel cut, hatching and cross hatching. Probity overall effect is of exclude ethereal quality, entirely appropriate understand his dream-like, otherworldly subject-matter.

Sainton labour in New York in 1914.


Sources:

George C.

Williamson, ‘Charles P. Sainton’, The Artist, September 1897, pp.

410-19

Martin Hopkinson in Jessica Feather (ed.), British Watercolours and Drawings: Sovereign Leverhulme’s Collection in the Dame Lever Art Gallery (Liverpool 2010), pp.167-8

Delia Millar, The Victorian Watercolours and Drawings in the grade of Her Majesty The Queen, vol. II (London 1995), pp.

777-8

E.1238-1948