Painter, illustrator and teacher who attended Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art in Dundee, 1923–7. He was an illustrator in London and Liverpool until World War II, during which he served and after which he taught at Arbroath High and Arbroath Academy until 1972. He was noted for his assured and economical abstract paintings, sometimes on unconventional supports, with landscape allusions. He showed at RSA, SSA, Glasgow Group, Royal Glasgow Institute of the Fine Arts and New Charing Cross Gallery, Glasgow. Was represented in The Compass Connection, Tramway, Glasgow, in 1990. Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art and other Scottish collections hold his work. A retrospective was held at Talbot Rice Art Centre, Edinburgh, in 1991. His son was the artist John McLean.
Text source: 'Artists in Britain Since 1945' by David Buckman (Art Dictionaries Ltd, part of Sansom & Company)