Identity:

Joseph Finnemore was a painter and illustrator.

Life:

Finnemore trained at the Birmingham School of Art and at Antwerp with Charles Verlat. He returned to England in 1881. He then made a tour of Malta, Greece, Turkey, South Russia and Bessarabia, and settled in London in 1884. In the 1900s he concentrated on producing colour work for English and Continental colour printers.

He exhibited at Birmingham, GIFA; LAE; Royal College of Art; RHA; ROI; and RWA. He illustrated G.A. Henty's When London burned (1894) and contributed to The Graphic, English Illustrated Magazine, Black & White, The Strand Magazine, Chums, The Wide World Magazine, Cassell's Saturday Journal, Cassell's Family Magazine, The Boys' Own Paper, The Girls' Own Paper and The Windsor Magazine.

He was a member of the Society of Illustrators which invited Whistler to become its Vice-President in 1894. He was also a member of the Royal Society of British Artists from 1893, a Society of which Whistler had been President from June 1886 until November 1888. He was also a member of the RI from 1898.

Bibliography:

Bénézit, E., Dictionnaire des Peintres, Sculpteurs, Dessinateurs et Graveurs, 8 vols, Paris, 1956-61; Young, Andrew McLaren, Margaret F. MacDonald, Robin Spencer and Hamish Miles, The Paintings of James McNeill Whistler, New Haven and London, 1980; MacDonald, Margaret F., James McNeill Whistler. Drawings, Pastels and Watercolours. A Catalogue Raisonné, New Haven and London, 1995; Houfe, Simon, The Dictionary of Nineteenth Century Book Illustrators and Caricaturists, Woodbridge, 1996.