Guy Stair Sainty

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Guy Stair Sainty
Born (1950-12-07) 7 December 1950 (age 73)
Clayton Priory, Hassocks, Sussex, England
Education Westminster School
Alma mater University of Rome
College of Law
OccupationArt dealer
Spouses
Cynthia Holland Ash Volk
(m. 1983;div. 1993)
Elizabeth Frost Pierson
(m. 1995)
[1]
Children6
Parent(s)Christopher Lawrence Sainty and Virginia Cade Stair

Guy Stair Sainty, KStJ KC*SG (born 7 December 1950) [2] is a British art dealer and author on nobility, royal genealogy, and heraldry.

Contents

Life and education

Guy Stair Sainty is the son of Christopher Lawrence Sainty and Virginia Cade Stair, grand-daughter of Alfred Stair. [3] His father was Chief Engineer and Director of Carrier Engineering Co Ltd. [4] He attended Highfield School in Hampshire and Westminster School, London, and continued his education in Rome and at The College of Law in London. [3] In 1979, he moved to New York but returned to Europe in 2002, first to Paris and then to London where the Stair Sainty Gallery has been based since 2005. The gallery specialises primarily in French and Spanish painting from the sixteenth to the early twentieth century and has sold works of art to many of the world's great museums, publishing catalogues on a range of artists and schools.

He married, firstly, on 5 February 1983, Cynthia Holland Ash Volk, [5] with three children, Charles, Clementine, and Della. The marriage ended in divorce in 1993 and ecclesiastical annulment in 1995. Sainty married Elizabeth Frost Pierson, the daughter of W. DeVier Pierson and Shirley Phelps Pierson, née Frost, a private dealer in 19th and 20th century art in New York, in Washington on 28 May 1995 [1] and in a second ceremony at the London Oratory on 28 September 1995. With Elizabeth he had three children, George, Julian and Arabella.

Sainty is a half-brother, by his father's first wife, of Sir John Sainty, retired Clerk of the Parliaments.[ citation needed ]

Publications

Appointments, awards, and decorations

Sainty has had an interest in the subject of chivalry and heraldry for many years. He is a Fellow with the International Commission on Orders of Chivalry. [6] Sainty is a correspondent member of the Real Academia Matritense de Heraldica y Genealogia (Royal Academy of Heraldry and Genealogy of Madrid). [7] He has served for more than twenty years as one of the consultants to the Committee on the Orders of Saint John of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta and The Alliance of the Orders of St. John of Jerusalem. [8]

Sainty has served as a County Staff Officer (Sussex) in the St. John Ambulance. He was first appointed an Associate Officer (Brother), then promoted to an Associated Commander (Brother) on 16 June 1989, [9] and again promoted to the rank of Associate Knight of the Venerable Order of Saint John on 30 July 1992. [10] He was transferred to full membership as a knight of Justice with the change of Statutes in 1999, and served as Vice-Chancellor of the Priory in the US until June 2008, [11] but has since transferred to the central roll of the Order.

Sainty is an armiger, having had arms granted by the College of Arms in London, and matriculated at the Court of the Lord Lyon in Edinburgh. [12] [13] Sainty has also served as a senior county staff officer to H.R.H. Prince Tomislav of Yugoslavia. [14] He was formerly a member of the Savoy Order of Saints Maurice and Lazarus [15] but resigned in 2006[ citation needed ] and is the Vice-Grand Chancellor of the Sacred Military Constantinian Order of Saint George (Hispano-Neapolitan branch), of which he is a Bailiff Grand Cross. [16] In 2018 the Boletín Oficial del Estado published "The Constantinian Order of Saint George" by Sainty, the first publication in English by the BOE, with a translation in Spanish published in 2020.

On 15 January 2014, Sainty was awarded the rank of Commander (Encomienda) of the Order of Isabella the Catholic by King Juan Carlos I and received unrestricted permission to wear the decorations on 27 July 2017.[ citation needed ]

Dynastic Orders

Libel suit by Rosario Poidimani

In December 2003, Rosario Poidimani sued Sainty in an Italian court for libel, on account of his published analysis of the claims to the Portuguese throne of Maria Pia de Saxe-Coburgo e Bragança and Rosario Poidimani. [17] In August 2010, Rosario Poidimani won a decision against Sainty in the court of Vicenza; for defamation allegedly caused by the article, Sainty was ordered to pay twenty thousand euro in the judgment. In March 2016, the Italian Court of Appeal of Venice decided in Sainty's favour, rejecting the claim of Poidimani. (No. 730/2016 published 30/03/2016, RG n. 2667/2010, Repert. n. 680/2016 of 30.03.2016.)[ citation needed ]

Related Research Articles

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References

  1. 1 2 "Class Notes". Colorado College. 1995. Archived from the original on 2 April 2007. Retrieved 23 May 2007.
  2. Papal knights Archived 6 February 2012 at the Wayback Machine – Website of the Association of Papal Orders in Great Britain
  3. 1 2 "Miss Volk Weds Guy Stair Sainty". The New York Times. 5 February 1983. p. 12. Cynthia Holland Ash Volk, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Kenneth Hohne Volk of New York and Quaker Hill, Pawling, N.Y., was married yesterday to Guy Stair Sainty, son of Mrs. Christopher Lawrence Sainty of London and the late Mr. Sainty. The Rev. James Whittemore performed the ceremony in the chapel of Trinity Episcopal Church in Manhattan....Mr. Sainty is president of Stair Sainty Fine Art Inc. in Manhattan, which specializes in French painting of the late 18th and 19th centuries. He attended the Westminster School in London and the University of Rome and graduated from the College of Law in London
  4. Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives
  5. "Guy Sainty and Cynthia Volk Engaged". New York Times. 5 December 1982. p. A102. ISSN   0362-4331 . Retrieved 13 October 2022.
  6. "Patrons and Members".
  7. Mansel, Philip; Riotte, Torsten, eds. (2010). Monarchy and Exile : the politics of the absent ruler from Marie de Medici to Wilhelm II (1631–1941). Basingstoke: Palgrave. pp. xii. ISBN   9780230249059. He is a correspondent member of the Real Academia Matritense de Heraldica y Genealogia
  8. "Unrecognized and Self-Styled Orders: Preventive Action Measures by Recognized Orders". The Most Venerable Order of the Hospital of St John of Jerusalem. The American Society and The Priory in the United States of America of The Most Venerable Order of the Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem. Archived from the original on 24 September 2011. Retrieved 18 September 2011.
  9. "No. 51767". The London Gazette . 16 June 1989. p. 7104.
  10. "No. 53005". The London Gazette . 30 July 1992. p. 12843.
  11. "The Priory in the United States of the Most Venerable Order of the Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem" (PDF). Venerable Order of St John. 15 November 2006. Archived from the original (PDF) on 7 August 2007. Retrieved 6 June 2007.
  12. "Roll of Arms of rec.heraldry". Jérôme Grimbert. 1 January 2007. Retrieved 25 May 2007.
  13. "G Britain III". José Vicente de Bragança & J. Stewart LeForte. 15 May 1998. Retrieved 25 May 2007.
  14. "The New York Genealogical and Biographical Society – Nobility And Heraldry With Guy Stair Sainty on January 25th". The New York Genealogical and Biographical Society. 2000–2007. Retrieved 11 June 2007.
  15. "Events". American Delegation of Savoy Orders. August 2003. Archived from the original on 26 September 2004. Retrieved 25 May 2007.
  16. "Membership – Sacred Military Constantinian Order of St. George". Sacred Military Constantinian Order of St. George. 2007. Archived from the original on 20 May 2007. Retrieved 25 May 2007.
  17. http://www.chivalricorders.org/royalty/fantasy/portugal-false.htm