Page:Dictionary of National Biography. Sup. Vol III (1901).djvu/143

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McLachlan
129
Maclean

Darlington, on 16 March 1845. Educated at Merchiston Castle school, Edinburgh, and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he graduated B.A. in 1868, and was bracketed first in the moral science tripos, he entered Lincoln's Inn on 27 Oct. 1865, and was called to the bar on 17 Nov. 1868. For some years he practised in the court of chancery, but he did not care for the work and had few briefs. His desire was to be a painter, and, encouraged by John Pettie [q. v.] and others who believed in his gifts, he, in 1878, gave up law and took to art. He had no academic training to begin with, and the short time he spent in the studio of Carolus Duran at a later date was of little account; but he studied the early English landscape painters, and later was considerably influenced by the work of the French romanticists and Cecil Gordon Lawson [q. v.] His work was always individual and interesting, for he had a poetic apprehension of nature, and was peculiarly sensitive to grave and impressive emotions which belong to twilight, night, and solitude. And while his technique was somewhat faulty, he designed with dignity and was a refined and powerful colourist.

He exhibited at the Academy and the Grosvenor, and later at the New Gallery and the Institute of Painters in Oil-colours, of which he was a member; but it was not until 1896, when he became associated with five other painters in the 'Landscape Exhibition' at the Dudley Gallery, that the beauty of his work, there seen more in a mass and in more congenial surroundings, drew the attention it deserved. But he lived to share in only another exhibition, for on 1 April 1897 he died at Weybridge. In June of that year a collection of his pictures was brought together in the studios of his friends, Mr. Leslie Thomson and Mr. R. W. Allan, and shortly afterwards some of his admirers presented a characteristic work, 'Ships that pass in the Night,' to the National Gallery.

In 1870 he married Jean, youngest daughter of William Stow Stowell of Faverdale, who with the son and daughter of the marriage survived him. A portrait drawn in red chalk by E. R. Hughes has been reproduced, a small portrait is worked into a headpiece in the 'Magazine of Art' (1895), and in the 'Art Journal' (1897) a photograph is reproduced.

[Private information; Foster's Men at the Bar, 1885; Preface to Catalogue of Memorial Exhibition by Selwyn Image; Magazine of Art, 895; Saturday Review, 12 June 1897; Art Journal, May 1897; Exhibition Catalogues; Cat. National Gallery of British Art.

MACLEAN, Sir JOHN (1811–1895), archæologist, son of Robert Lean of Trehudrethbarton, in Blisland, Cornwall, and his wife Elizabeth, daughter of Thomas Every of Bodmin, was born at Trehudreth on 17 Sept. 1811. In 1845, as a descendant of the Dochgarroch branch of the clan Lean, he resumed the prefix of Mac.

Maclean entered the ordnance department of the war office in 1837, was keeper of the ordnance records in the Tower of London from 1855 to 1861, and deputy chief auditor of army accounts from 1865 to 1871. In that year he retired on a pension, and on 14 Jan. 1871 was knighted at Osborne. While engaged in official life he dwelt at Pallingswick Lodge, Hammersmith, and as an active churchman took much interest in the ecclesiastical administration of the parish of St. John, Hammersmith. After his retirement he lived at Bicknor Court, near Coleford, Gloucestershire, and from, about 1887 at Glasbury House, Clifton, where he died on 6 March 1895. He married at Holland church, Cornwall, on 5 Dec. 1835, Mary (b. 1813), elder daughter and coheiress of Thomas Billing, of Blisland and St. Breward. She survived her husband.

Maclean's great undertaking was: 1. 'Parochial and Family History of the Deanery of Trigg Minor,' 3 vols., a rural deanery of East Cornwall, comprising the topographical particulars of several important parishes, the principal of which was Bodmin, and containing elaborate pedigrees of many of the leading families in the county. It came out in parts between 1868 and 1879, and in it was embodied the labour of twenty years. His other works and editions included: 2. 'The Life and Times of Peter Carew,' 1857. 3. 'Letters from George, lord Carew, to Sir Thomas Roe, 1615-17,' Camden Society, 1860. 4. 'Letters from Sir Robert Cecil to Sir George Carew,' Camden Society, 1864. 5. 'The Life of Sir Thomas Seymour, knight, Baron Seymour of Sudeley,' 1869 (one hundred copies only). After his withdrawal into Gloucestershire he edited 6. 'The Berkeley Manuscripts: John Smyth's Lives of the Berkeleys,' 1883-5, 3 vols. 7. 'Annals of Chepstow Castle. By John Fitchett Marsh,' 1883; and 8. 'Historical and Genealogical Memoir of the Family of Poyntz,'1886. With W. C. Heane he edited 9. 'The Visitation of Gloucester in 1623,' Harleian Society, 1885. While living in London Maclean shared with enthusiasm in the work of its chief antiquarian societies. He was elected F.S.A. on 15 Dec. 1855, and was long a member of the council. At the meetings of the Royal Archæological In-