John Goodwin Lyman (September 29, 1886 – May 26, 1967) was an American-born Canadian modernist painter active largely in Montreal, Quebec.

Lyman enrolled at the Académie Matisse in the fall of 1909, which he left due to illness the next spring, returning to Montreal in the summer of 1910.

Due to his rejection in his native country, Lyman and his wife spent twenty-eight peripatetic years living in France, Spain, and North Africa.

[6] Lyman, seeing that the Contemporary Art Society could no longer effectively fulfill its purpose, made a motion to dissolve the body.

Lyman continued to paint figures in the years following the dissolution of the CAS, but the avant garde had shifted to the Automatism of Borduas and pure abstraction.

[8] While strongly influenced by Fauvism, Lyman's work is characterized by an emotional reserve and psychological distance out of keeping with that movement.

[1] Woman With a White Collar especially shows this mixture of Fauvist influence with Lyman's calm, classical personal style.

[8] It can be compared with similar portraits by Matisse in its handling of the facial planes and the somewhat arbitrary use of color,[4] but displays a prim and static elegance in its contrast of the solidly formed head against the neutral background.