Milton James Burns was born in Mt. Gilead, Ohio, in 1853. A founding member of the Salmagundi Club in New York, Burns became a highly acclaimed marine painter, one of the few who was actually a sailor. His career as a marine painter began when he accompanied William Bradford on an Arctic Expedition in 1869. He sailed constantly, first along the Maine coast where he was one of the earliest painters at Monhegan Island and Grand Manan, then frequently to the Grand Banks and North Sea.

He lived in England, France, Norway, the Canadian Maritimes, Gloucester, Alaska, the Pacific Northwest and the West Indies. He spent many of his summers on Monhegan Island. Burns was an illustrator for Harper’s Weekly, Scribner’s and Literary Digest and is credited with the first illustrated article about Monhegan Island. Numerous pen and ink drawings of Monhegan appeared in Harper’s. He was a sketching friend of Winslow Homer, sharing with him the belief that an artist should go directly to nature for inspiration. He was also close friends with Frederic Remington, Edwin Austin Abbey and Gilbert Gaul.