Circa 1890. Signed in pencil and complete in its original glazed frame with remains of old framer’s label to verso. 40.5 x 29cm.

Ref: 24543

Charles Prosper Sainton (1861 – 1914) His father, Prosper Philippe Sainton, first visited England in 1844 and appeared as a violinist at a Royal Philharmonic Society concert conducted by Mendelssohn. In the following year he settled in London, became a professor at the Royal Academy of Music, led the Royal Phiharmonic Orchestra, the Royal Italian Opera Orchestra at Covent Garden, the Monday Popular Concerts, the Birmingham Festivals and various chamber music ensembles. In 1860 Prosper Sainton married Miss Helen Dolby the famous English contralto to whom Mendelssohn dedicated his “Six Songs Op. 57” and wrote the contralto solo part in “E1ijah” with the special idea of her singing it.
Charles however did not pursue music as a career, but became an R.I. elected as a member of the Royal Institute of Painters in Water-Colours in 1897 and a member of the Royal Miniature Society in 1904.
A collection of his work is in the possession of the Royal Family at Sandringham Palace.
Charles was one of the principal and leading practitioners of the demanding medium of silver-point etching, during its short-lived revival in the late 19th and early 20th centuries (until this time it had hardly been used since the early 16th century). He exploited metal-point’s capacity to express romanticised prettiness in soft, silvery tones. Technically brilliant, Sainton builds lines in a disciplined way, the overall effect is of an ethereal quality, entirely appropriate to his dream-like, otherworldly subject-matter.
Today Charles is possibly more famously known as the father of Philip Sainton, who followed his grandfather’s profession and became an important performer and composer of classical music.