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Painter, draughtsman and teacher who in 1915 was invited to attend evening classes at Bromley School of Art, in 1918 winning a trade scholarship to Beckenham School of Art. Finney studied painting with Amy Katherine Browning and etching with Eric Gill. Around 1927 he won a scholarship to the Royal College of Art, where he studied under William Rothenstein, who befriended and drew him, other artists encountered there including Barnett Freedman, Percy Horton, Albert Houthuesen, Morris Kestelman and Gerald Ososki. In 1929 after graduation he took up a travelling scholarship, returning to teach part-time at Chelsea School of Art under Percy Hague Jowett, then Harold Sandys Williamson. In the period 1927–34 Finney exhibited several times at the NEAC and in 1935, after the birth of his first son, Brian, his painting Mother and Child was sold to Carlisle Art Gallery.

Text source: 'Artists in Britain Since 1945' by David Buckman (Art Dictionaries Ltd, part of Sansom & Company)


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