John Maclauchlan Milne, RSA (12 August 1885; Buckhaven – 28 October 1957; Greenock) was a post-impressionist artist. He was an artist of the Jazz Age - in Paris, then the French Riviera in the 1920s; in Italy, the Scottish Highlands and Iona in the 1930s; and Arran from 1940 for the rest of his career.
His career began alongside his father, landscape artist Joe Milne (1859 – 1911) in London in 1907, after Milne returned from his short-term emigration to Canada. The Milnes returned to Scotland, to Dundee, and Milne was a professional artist, based in Dundee, for the next 30 years.
Milne's uncle, William Watt Milne (1865 – 1949) was also a professional landscape artist. William left Scotland in 1914 to live and paint in Cambridgeshire for the rest of his life.
Milne was a well-known character in the Dundee Art Society and among the leading local art collectors. Demobbed from the Royal Air Force in June 1919, he returned from France and Belgium to Dundee to resume his career as an artist. He had a studio at 132a Nethergate from about 1920 until 1940.
Dundee emerged in the forefront of post-impressionist art in Scotland with the 1922 Art Exhibition including various pictures by significant French artists loaned by local collectors, as well as pictures for sale from local artists.
Milne returned to France: this time to paint and the 1922 Dundee Exhibition included ten of his paintings from Paris. In the subsequent years of the 1920s, he would spend time each spring/summer painting along the Riviera from Cassis, to St Tropez and St Paul de Vence. He was supported by collectors in Dundee. He had several one-man exhibitions, but his main show was in London at the Independent Gallery in February and March 1931.
The Wall Street Crash of 1929 and the subsequent economic depression changed the market for modern art. Milne had to adapt to changing demand for his work. His focus changed to Scotland – Perthshire, the North-west Highlands, Iona and later to Arran.
Milne was painting in the same places – at approximately the same times – in a similar style – exhibiting with the same dealers - as the four other Scottish artists who would later be packaged as "The Scottish Colourists", namely S.J.Peploe, F.C.B.Cadell, G.L.Hunter and J.D.Fergusson. JMM was a friend of Leslie Hunter and knew Fergusson. JMM exhibited alongside Peploe and Cadell.
Milne's paintings are recognised by collectors and auction houses, but he is not more widely known. Some would have him recognised as "The Dundee Colourist" or "The Fifth Scottish Colourist".