George Pinto

George Pinto (25 September 1785 – 23 March 1806) was an English composer and keyboard virtuoso.

Family

He was baptised at St. Mary's, Lambeth on 11 February 1786 as George Sanders. Accounts of Pinto's life and character are tenuous. There seems to be no surviving correspondence, nor did he have any descendants preserving a family tradition. His father, Samuel Sanders (or Saunders) died young, and it was from his mother, Julia Sanders (née Pinto) that he took not only his surname but also his musical upbringing. He had no siblings, (certainly none that lived past infancy), and received lavish affection from his mother and step-grandmother, the English singer Charlotte Brent (1735–1802). His mother's father, Thomas Pinto (1714-c.1780) was a well-known London violinist who had fled to England for political reasons and was the son of a civil servant to the King of Naples. His first wife was the daughter of a German pastor, and the grandmother of George, but it was his second wife, Charlotte Brent, who saw George through his childhood.