JOHN MACLAUCHLAN MILNE R.S.A. (SCOTTISH 1885-1957)
JARDIN DU LUXEMBOURG
Signed, oil on board
33cm x 46cm (13in x 18in)
Sotheby’s Gleneagles, Scottish and Sporting Pictures and Sculpture, 5 September 2001, Lot 1287Bonhams Edinburgh, The Winter Fine Sales, 4 December 2009, Lot 56
Exhibited: Roseangle Gallery, Dundee, An Exhibition of the Work of John Maclauchlan Milne 1885-1957, 25 June-23 July 2022, no.17  This joyful painting of a fountain in the Luxembourg Gardens in Paris shows how taken Maclauchlan Milne was with the French capital, including its verdant and well-tended parks. The Gardens were established in 1612, cover 55 acres and remain popular to this day. Maclauchlan Milne would also have been drawn to the Musée du Luxembourg there, which was then devoted to the work of living artists.Maurice Millar, the artist’s biographer, has explained that Maclauchlan Milne’s dated pictures of Paris are from 1920, 1921 and 1922, although by no means all were classified in this way. (email to Alice Strang of 14 April 2024). Millar continues: “Maclauchlan Milne had his first solo exhibition at the gallery of Thomas Murray & Sons in Dundee in early April 1921 and this show included several Paris pictures. Sometime in 1921-22 he took over a studio at 132a Nethergate, Dundee. This would be his Scottish base until he left for Arran in 1940. Probably it was his first studio exhibition…[that was]…reported in the press in May 1922 under the heading ‘Paris in Dundee’, which stated: ‘A residence in Paris gave him a greatly broadened technique and a fierce joy in pure colour.’” (Maurice Millar, op.cit.). Indeed, it was said of Maclauchlan Milne’s Paris paintings that they ‘betray a daring in treatment and colouring’ when two were shown at the Royal Glasgow Institute in 1922. This description could be applied to Jardin du Luxembourg without hesitation.We are grateful to Maurice Millar, author of The Missing Colourist: The Search for John Maclauchlan Milne RSA (privately published in 2022 and available via The Missing Colourist website) for his help with our research.