John Maclauchlan Milne (1885-1957) was in the same places, at the same times, doing the same thing, as those artists who would later become known as The Scottish Colourists. He was an artist of the jazz age – painting all along the Côte d’Azur from Marseilles to Nice in the 1920s, returning to his studio in Dundee to work up his sketches into exhibits for the annual exhibitions at the Royal Scottish Academy, the Royal Glasgow Institute, the Society of Scottish Artists and for his solo ‘shows’ in Dundee, Glasgow and London.

Born in Buckhaven, Fife, in 1885, his father Joe Milne and an uncle, William Watt Milne, were landscape painters. As a child, his family lived in Edinburgh before they left for London in 1903, but JMM emigrated to Canada at age 17, returning four years later.

His earliest known painting (The River Thames at Kew) is dated 1907. He returned to Scotland, to Dundee, in 1908/09.

In the period before World War One, JMM’s painting style was very similar to his father’s and his pictures feature coastal scenes in Fife and rural Scottish landscapes. During the war, he joined the Royal Flying Corps and served in the north of France and near Ypres in Belgium. He exhibited A Belgian Landscape in 1919. He was demobbed in June 1919; and returned to Dundee.

An exhibition of paintings in Dundee by Vincent van Gogh, Pierre Bonnard and Édouard Vuillard, in February 1920, may have influenced his decision to return to France: to Paris and the Loire Valley. JMM discovered the paintings of Paul Cézanne and, thereafter, like others, he became a Colourist. With support from collectors in Scotland, he returned to France most years until 1930; mostly to the Côte d’Azur, but also to Tuscany (1930).

The Wall Street Crash of October 1929 and the following years of economic depression affected the art market. His continental trips appear to have come to an end in 1930 and he concentrated on the Highlands in the 1930s. He followed Cadell and Peploe to Iona in 1937.

In 1940, he went to live on the isle of Arran until near the end of his life. He died in Greenock in 1957.

JMM lived his professional life as an artist: he did not teach. He painted; he exhibited; he sold. Today, his pictures are well known amongst auction houses and collectors, but the man himself remains an enigma.

Those few who remember JMM tell of a talented, cheerful, gregarious, handsome character, but with a pronounced stammer. Remarkably, his stammer disappeared when he was singing or reciting poetry.

JMM’s pictures regularly appear in fine art auctions, and they achieve good prices, but his place in history continues to be overlooked. The Missing Colourist is a fully referenced, illustrated biography of the artist and it is the first detailed study of his life and works based on archive materials, contemporary newspaper reports and auction records. Copies are available direct from the author at www.themissingcolourist.co.uk