"Louis Finch" is a work by Willy Finch

Horta, from Belgium, sells on 10 October 2017 a "Louis Finch" seascape of the North Seea, estimated at 300 to 400 Euro.

No Louis Finch is known, but the signature clearly reads Willy Finch. Finch (1854-1930), one of the most important Belgian neo-impressionists. One would be very hard-pressed to find an original Finch for less than 1000 Euro, and his best works (e.g. some of his early pointillist works (one of his works was sold at Christie's Amsterdam in 1997 for more than 200,000 Euro).

This one is, depending on how you look at it, either rather grey and boring, or very spherical and daring in its near monochrome approach.

Top to bottom: signature on this work, similar signature from Blouin Artsales info, 
and more typical form of his signature from an 1888 pointillist work.


He usually signed his paintings A W Finch, not Willy Finch, but the signature matches some works by him, including some very early ones from the 1880s also painted in Ostend, where he was often working together with the great Belgian post-Impressionist James Ensor in his best years.

Ensor painted at least four portraits of Finch at work, a witness of how close they were at the time and how important Finch was in the local art scene of that period.

I'm not totally convinced that this is a real Finch, the signature is not really convincing and the work is generic enough to be fakeable: however, if it is by Finch, then it probably is an early work and a real avant-garde work, and it should be worth ten times the estimate.