The Brief, Luminous Life of John Cairns In the annals of Victorian Scottish art, few figures possess a story as poignant and visually arresting as John Cairns. Born in Dundee in 1845, Cairns emerged during a transformative era for the landscape movement, a time when the rugged, untamed spirit of the Highlands began to find its most profound expression on canvas. His life, though tragically truncated by tuberculosis at the tender age of twenty-five, was marked by an intense, concentrated period of creative output that left an indelible mark on the Scottish school of painting. To look upon a C…