As an artist Finney was ambitious he strove throughout his career to create a vision that would be enduring. His decade long apprenticeship at art school connected him with the aesthetic sensibility of the most celebrated masters of the past and whilst Finney would never have any illusion that he was their equal, there is a touch of a modern day Vermeer in Amy Ironing (the painting used as the cover image of this catalogue). And Finney’s landscapes have the same graphic charge as those much loved watercolours of Ravilious which so evocatively capture the peculiarities of the different counties of Britain. In contrast to these, Finney’s languid nocturnes, such as Haymarket by Night, have all the aching loneliness of an Edward Hopper, whilst his domestic interiors have passages that resonate the same sense of intimacy as an Edward Vuillard.