JOHN MACLAUCHLAN MILNE R.S.A. (SCOTTISH 1885-1957) §
A DAY AT THE SEASIDE
Estimate: £1,500 - £2,000
Scottish Paintings & Sculpture
Auction: Evening Sale | Lots 112- 206 | Thursday 05 June from 6pm
Description
Signed, oil on canvas
Dimensions
25.5cm x 35.5cm (10in x 14in)
Provenance
Sotheby’s Hopetoun House, Scottish and Sporting Prints, Paintings, Drawings and Watercolours, 13 November 1979, lot 384
Footnote
John Maclauchlan Milne painted various pictures, in oil and in watercolour, of figures on the shore – children playing, workers gathering seaweed, cockle gatherers and other images without figures which focus on wild seas and breaking waves. Generally, these pictures are not titled to specific locations, or the original titles have not survived.
This painting is undated, but it is similar to various other works from the period 1908 to 1920. Within this, the form of signature suggests the years 1915 to 1920, accepting that the artist was serving with the Royal Flying Corps in northern France from January 1917 until June 1919.
Other dated works of the period 1915 to 1916 include A Fifeshire Landscape (shown at the Royal Glasgow Institute in 1915, no. 347), A Fifeshire Moor (shown at the Royal Scottish Academy in 1915, no. 66), Golden Fringe of Fife of 1916 and Boarhills, near St Andrews, also of 1916. Therefore the tentative conclusion is that the present work and those other related pictures of figures on the shore, were from locations on the coast of Fife. At that time Maclauchlan Milne was living in Dundee.
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 cataloguing of this work.
It has been suggested that this lot depicts the Haughs of Benholm.