Painter of landscapes in oil and watercolour and gallery proprietor, born in Ashington, Northumberland, who began spare-time painting while working there as a teacher. In the early 1940s he joined the Ashington Group of painters, which had been started by Robert Lyon with a core of aspiring miners such as Jack Harrison and Oliver Kilbourn. McLean accompanied the Group on its trips to the National and Tate Galleries. For a few years from 1947 he showed in Artists of the Northern Counties shows at Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle. After he moved to teach in Alnwick in 1951 he was less in touch with the Group. Now his preoccupation was setting up and administering the town’s Bondgate Gallery, which he ran with his wife for almost 30 years, although he did put on an Ashington Group exhibition there in 1965.