Joseph Milne Tayport, 1891 (photo: - Bonhams)

John Maclauchlan Milne, RSA (1885 – 1957), JMM, was born into an artistic family. His father Joseph Milne (1859 – 1911) was a professional landscape artist all his careeer, as was his uncle William Watt Milne (1865 – 1949). Joe Milne exhibited annually at the Royal Scottish Academy (RSA) in Edinburgh from 1877 until 1902, at the Royal Academy on six occasions, and at the Royal Glasgow Institute (RGI) from 1880 to 1902.

Joe Milne’s career stalled in 1903, and he left Scotland with his family, following bankruptcy. JMM did not join them. Instead, at age 17, he emigrated alone to Canada in June 1903. Tales of working as a cowboy, and begging on the streets of Montreal, seem to indicate that the Canadian adventure did not go well and four years later JMM had re-joined his family who were then living in London.

William Watt Milne An East Coast Harbour, 1891 (photo: - Bonhams)

JMM’s uncle William Watt Milne followed a parallel career path. He also exhibited annually at the RSA and the RGI from 1883 to 1894, before leaving Scotland for Ireland. Subsequently he returned and lived in St Monans, later Cambuskenneth, and left Scotland again in 1914 for St Ives in Cambridgeshire where he lived for the rest of his life. William’s style was similar to his brother’s and reflected landscape painting of the Victorian age.

John MacLauchlan Milne View of Strand on the Green, Chiswick, c.1908 (photo: Bonhams)

The earliest known dated painting by JMM is from 1907, after his return from Canada, and shows a scene from the River Thames. This is one of several JMM paintings from the area between Kew Bridge and Chiswick and not far from the family’s address in Gunnersbury, West London.

Joe Milne brought his family back to Scotland in 1908/09 and they settled in Dundee. Joe and JMM were painting together in Perthshire in the summer of 1909 prior to a joint sale of their pictures in November 1909. Joe died in January 1911; JMM married in June 1911 and he and his wife lived briefly at Kingoodie. He began exhibiting at the RSA in 1912 and this continued annually, with only five exceptions, until 1954.

John MacLauchlan Milne Cottages on the Perth to Dundee Road – Kingoodie, by Invergowrie (photo: Lindsay Burns & Co.)

JMM’s early landscapes were painted around Fife and the River Tay. He followed the style of his father and uncle.

Conscription was introduced in 1916 and JMM joined The Royal Flying Corps in January 1917. He was posted to No. 1 Aircraft Depot in St Omer, Northern France. There are a few surviving drawings from locations in and near Ypres from 1917/18, and several watercolours from Normandie and Belgium.

He was demobbed and returned to Dundee in June 1919. Although he had been absent from Dundee on military service, he had been appointed to the role of President of the Dundee Art Society for 1919. He had been active exhibiting in DAS exhibitions from at least 1913.

John MacLauchlan Milne, Fontaine du Palmier, Place du Châtelet, Paris, 1920 (photo: - Bonhams)

In February 1920 an exhibition of French paintings was presented in Dundee with pictures by Édouard Vuillard, Pierre Bonnard and Vincent van Gogh. Collectors in Dundee were among the first in Scotland to acquire paintings by van Gogh. JMM would have seen these paintings and others by Peploe and Fergusson and this may have stimulated his decision to return to France and his consequent change in style. His RSA obituary in 1957 included ‘Like Peploe, he saw Cézanne and was immediately conquered’.

John MacLauchlan Milne, Moulin de la Galette, Paris, 1920 (photo: - Sotheby’s)

His own first solo exhibition was held in March/April 1921 at Murray’s Galleries in The Nethergate, Dundee.  This included paintings of Paris from 1920. George Leslie Hunter had a solo exhibition in the same galleries later that year, in November 1921.

John MacLauchlan Milne, Langeron, Midi, 1920 (photo: Lindsay Burns & Co.)

The Dundee Evening Telegraph, reporting on the exhibition, referred to the pictures as “the result from a year’s painting of the Latin Quarter of Paris and the pastoral country south of Paris”. The ‘pastoral country’ was around Lavardin and Langeron in the Loire Valley and there are several of JMM’s landscapes surviving from that time.

There are various JMM Paris paintings dated 1920, 1921 and 1922 and many others which are undated. Some of his dated paintings from 1923 are from Torridon in the North-west Highlands. He returned to France again in 1924 and this was his first visit to the Côte d’Azur – to Cassis.

John MacLauchlan Milne, Red Roofs, Cassis , 1924 (photo: - National Trust for Scotland)

In the years from 1924 to 1930, JMM’s trips to France produced named paintings from L’Estaque, west of Marseilles, to St Paul de Vence, near Nice. The harbour at St Tropez was a favourite location.

John MacLauchlan Milne, St Tropez Harbour  n.d. (photo: courtesy of Jimmy Mackellar)

In the late 1920s/early 1930s, JMM and others turned to painting ‘flower pieces’ and there are many examples of these.

John MacLauchlan Milne, Still Life of Flowers on a Table, 1931 (photo: Portland Gallery)

The ‘Wall Street Crash’ of October 1929, and the following economic depression, affected the market for modern art. JMM began to lose the support of collectors in Dundee. His only visit to Italy, and probably his last continental trip, was in Spring 1930 when he painted in Tuscany (and probably at St Paul de Vence, Provence as well).

John MacLauchlan Milne, In Tuscany, 1930 (To be offered by Lyon & Turnbull on 8 June 2023)

In 1925, he began exhibiting at the annual exhibitions of the Society of Scottish Artists (SSA) in Edinburgh. He was accepted as a Professional Member in 1926 and he exhibited with them until 1938.

In 1933, at the fifth attempt, JMM was elected as an Associate of the RSA. In 1937, he was elected as a Member. As a condition of membership, he was required to present an example of his work. He chose his ‘Sands of Morar’ to be his Diploma Work and this remains in the RSA collection. It was part of a small posthumous exhibit at the RSA exhibition in 1958.

John MacLauchlan Milne, Iona Abbey, n.d. (photo: Sotheby’s)

After years of visiting the Côte d’Azur, in the 1930s he painted in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland – in Perthshire and on the west coast from Morar to Durness. Like so many other artists before him, he went to Iona in 1937 (and again in 1938 and 1939). His ‘Sound of Iona’ was purchased by the IBM Corporation from the 1938 RSA exhibition and shown in New York as part of IBM’s exhibition of  ‘Contemporary Art of 79 Countries’ at The World’s Fair in July 1939.

1939 also marked JMM’s first confirmed visit to Arran. His studio exhibition in Dundee in April 1940 included many paintings of Iona and Arran. After that studio exhibition, he left Dundee and moved to live on Arran. He lived there until near the end of his life in 1957.

JMM’s Arran paintings differ from his earlier work in that few are dated, but all are painted at locations within only a few miles of his home at High Corrie. There are many paintings of the cottages at High Corrie, of the harbour at Corrie, of the Arran hills, and of Sannox Bay.

John MacLauchlan Milne, Arran Cottages, n.d. (photo: - Sotheby’s)

JMM has been claimed as ‘The Dundee Colourist’ in Dundee where he lived for over 30 years. More widely he is hailed as ‘The Fifth Scottish Colourist’. He was doing the same thing, in the same places, at about the same times, as those contemporaries who would later be presented as ‘The Scottish Colourists’: namely F.C.B.Cadell, S.J.Peploe, Leslie Hunter and J.D.Fergusson.

JMM has left a light footprint on history. There are no diaries and very little correspondence. My biography of JMM, The Missing Colourist sets out his background; his career; his dealers and collectors; his exhibits; his contemporaries and competitors; his roles with the RSA and DAS; and his legacy. Copies are only available from www.themissingcolourist.co.uk

Maurice Millar