John Finnie

John Finnie (1829–22 February 1907) was a Scottish landscape painter and engraver. He was best known in London for his original mezzotint engravings of landscape, and exhibited at the Royal Academy and the Royal Society of Painters, Etchers, and Engravers. When he moved to Towyn in northern Wales he painted numerous landscape paintings of places in the Capel Curig area, such as Snowdon. He was headmaster of the Liverpool Mechanics Institute and School of Art from 1855 until 1896. Several paintings related to him are on display in the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool and the Portsmouth Museum.

Biography He was the son of John Finnie, brassfounder, by his wife Christian Mclndoe. He was born at Aberdeen, where he was baptised in the parish church on 4 May 1829. After serving apprenticeships to a house-painter at Edinburgh and a japanner at Wolverhampton he obtained employment with William Wailes, a glass-painter at Newcastle, where he remained five years, attending the school of design under William Bell Scott.

In 1853 he went to London, where he studied and taught in the Central School of Design at Marlborough House till, in 1855, he became master of the School of Art, then called the Mechanics' Institution, at Liverpool. In this position he continued forty-one years and six months, retiring at Christmas 1896. He is described as the dominating personality in the art life of Liverpool during that period. He began to send to the Liverpool Academy-exhibitions in 1856, became an associate in 1861, a full member and trustee in 1865, and was president of the academy in 1887–8. He was also president of the Artists' Club and of the Liver Sketching Club. Finnie also exhibited at the Salon Artistes Français and received a commendation in 1896. Other works are in the Norwich Castle museum and Wolverhampton Art Gallery. Among his protégés were Constance Copeman, who painted a portrait of him in 1903, now on display in the Walker Art Gallery, Elizabeth Dean, and William Henry Crome.

Selected works

Moel Siabod, from Capel Curig (c.1860) A Member of the Naval Reserve (1862) Maids of All Work (1864–5) Gathering Wild Flowers (1865) Snowdon from Capel Curig (1870) The Meeting of the Mersey and the Weaver (c.1874) Sunshine and Cloud, View near Capel Curig (1875–6) Sunset at Pangbourne (1878) Chester with St John's Church (1879) The Close of a Stormy Day, Vale of Clwyd (1893) The Little Orme (c.1897) The Heart of Nature (1898) A Tragic Sunset The River