Biography
Jack Warren McMillen was born in Jericho, TX in 1910. Census records indicate that family was in Cincinnati, OH in 1920, and that Jack was living in Douglas, NE in 1930. Around this time he left Nebraska and attended classes at the Art Students League in New York. He then studied at the Minneapolis School of Art, finally receiving a bachelor of fine arts degree from the University of Missouri.
He settled in New York and worked in graphic design, printmaking, lithography, etching and woodblocks. He undertook two mural projects during the Depression, creating Post Office murals for College Park, GA (1938) and Tuscumbia, AL (1939), and a mural for the First Presbyterian Church in Kirksville, MO, where his brother Pyron was pastor. He married Beatrice Alperstein in 1940 and was drafted into the Army in 1942. Given his beckground as an artist, the Army put him in charge of a traveling art show to raise money for war bonds. A publicity photo from this period shows him with actress Linda Darnell.
He could not continue this work, however, as he was diagnosed with an esophageal tumor in 1943. He was sent to Walter Reed Hospital, where he underwent a risky but successful operation. Following his surgery, he was offered a commission for a mural at nearby Forest Glen rehabilitation center where he himself had just stayed. He was happy to accept the commission as a way of thanking the doctors and staff at Walter Reed for having saved his life. The mural is on view today at the National Museum of Health and Medicine in Silver Spring, MD.
After the war McMillen continued to work as a commercial illustrator, garnering recognition with prizes in 1949, 1953 and 1954. In 1990, after the death of his brother and his wife, he married his brother's widow, Pauline Dawn Galloway McMillen. He himself lived until 1990, when he died in California.
Critical Analysis
McMillen's murals for College Park, GA and Tuscumbia, AL are both solid examples of art of the American Scene. They both depict historical events of local import. The College Park mural shows the arrival of the first train in College Park, while the Tuscumbia mural shows the arrival of the first white families in Tuscumbia. The Tuscumbia mural is somewhat unsettling to a modern viewer, since it celebrates the beginning of the destruction of Chickasaw culture. But the subject matter was probably proposed by Tuscumbia townspeople of that era, and McMillen was probably following their lead.
Colors in both of McMillen's Post Office murals are muted, perhaps a nod to the prevailing style of historical murals. But McMillen's mural for Forest Glen has a completely different look. The viewpoint is unusual - a birds-eye view of the grounds of the Forest Glen facility, with patients and staff strolling about or sitting to hear a concert band perform. The colors are bright, and the whole scene is very cheery. The work clearly expresses the emotions McMillen felt about Forest Glen - and creates a work of art that goes beyond the more academic presentations of his two Post Office murals.
While McMillen's murals were strictly representational, his paintings were not all in that vein. Rather he tended toward modernist, somewhat abstract landscapes, as exemplified by his "Ferry Boats."
Murals
- Tuscumbia, Alabama - Former Post Office: Chief Tuscumbia Greets the Dickson Family
- Washington, District of Columbia - National Museum of Health and Medicine: Noon
- College Park, Georgia - Post Office: Arrival of the Atlanta & West Point Railroad
References
- Biography of Jack McMillen (1910-1999) (Artprice).
- First Presbyterian Church.National Register of Historic Places Nomination (2017).
- "Noon" by Jack McMillen: Picturing Army Rehabilitation during Wartime (National Museum of Health and Medicine).
- Psychiatric Patients at Forest Glen (Visibly Human Health and Disease in the Human Body).
- Eric W. Boyle, PhD, The Surprising Origins of a World War II–Era Mural That Was Nearly Lost, Military Medicine Volume 180, Issue 12, December (2015). pp.1273-1274.