Andrew Peter Finken

Andrew Peter Finken was born on October 7, 1883, in the small village of Schönthal, nestled in the Eifel mountains of western Germany, near the ancient cathedral city of Aachen. He was the eldest surviving son born to Wilhelm Finken and Anita Gertrude von Freialdenhoven Finken a family of Western Rhineland French and German stock. Named after his paternal grandfather Peter Andreas Finken, he was educated at the schools of Aix-la-Chapelle and the Polytechnicum, graduating with a degree in Mechanical Engineering.

In his early teens he visited art galleries in Aachen, Cologne, Liège, and Dresden, developing a deep admiration for Albrecht Dürer, Anthony van Dyck, and Leonardo da Vinci. His father Wilhelm did not encourage artistic ambitions, so Pete followed his father's wishes and studied engineering. But he kept painting. The family lived close to the Dutch border, and Pete was regularly sent across it with a wheelbarrow loaded with cheaper Dutch groceries an hour's walk each way through the Eifel countryside. On those long walks he observed the landscape that would later appear in forty-eight Arkansas paintings.

Anita Gertrude von Freialdenhoven Finken Pete's mother. Studio portrait, Aachen region, circa 1880s.

The Finken family, Schönthal, Eifel, Germany, circa 18951900. Pete stands at far right.

On December 31, 1899 the last night of the nineteenth century the sixteen-year-old Pete stood in Aachen Cathedral as Christmas melodies filled the ancient stones. He would paint that memory sixty-two years later as "Turn of the Century."

He worked the Gewerkschaft Deutscher Kaiser steelworks at Bruckhausen-on-the-Rhine from September 1903 to July 1907. Then, carrying the weight of a family left behind, he boarded the Kaiserin Auguste Victoria at Hamburg on July 25, 1907 departing via Southampton and Cherbourg and arrived in New York. He was twenty-three years old. He never returned to Schönthal.

He settled in Arkansas, applied for citizenship on November 12, 1910 in Little Rock recorded as Peter Andrew Finken and spent fifteen years as superintendent of a twenty-man locomotive crew for the Missouri Pacific Railroad. On Christmas Day 1916, he married Clara Louise Keller in Pine Bluff. Their daughters Helen (1919) and Alma (1921) followed. The Great Railroad Strike of 1922 ended his railroad career. His brother-in-law Bill Keller, a Stuttgart furniture dealer, urged them to move. After a brief job that ended when the National Pipe and Valve Co. closed in 1924, Pete joined Fairbanks & Morse / Layne-Arkansas as an irrigation pump machinist and stayed twenty-five years, retiring in 1949.

Between 1940 and 1968 he painted 48 religious works the "Clue of Life Eternal" series placing 19 in Stuttgart-area churches, hospitals and public buildings. He founded the Brush and Palette Guild of Arkansas County (1955), pioneered the Arkansas County Arts Festival (1956), served as church Elder for twelve years, and was a founding member of the Grand Prairie Historical Society. He met four presidents. He received the DAR Americanism Medal in his final years. He died May 27, 1968, age eighty-four.

Andrew Peter Finken at his easel, Stuttgart, Arkansas, 1955. Age 7172. A country road landscape in progress. Palette in hand, bow tie, white shirt with rolled sleeves.

Between 1933 and 1968 Andrew Peter Finken produced landscapes, religious works, and the beloved "Clue of Life Eternal" series. His art heroes were Albrecht Dürer, Anthony van Dyck, and Leonardo da Vinci masters he encountered in the galleries of Aachen and Cologne as a teenager. He placed 19 of his religious paintings in Stuttgart-area churches, hospitals, and public buildings. He never stopped painting.

Religious Works

The Pietà "Sorrow"

The Pietà oil on board, circa 1950s1960s. The Virgin Mary cradles Christ beneath the cross, with Mary Magdalene at lower left and Saint John at right. Mounted in a dark arched frame.

Madonna with the Christ Child and Saint John

Madonna with the Christ Child and Saint John oil on canvas, ornate oval gilded frame. Rich jewel tones in the Renaissance tradition. Pete studied Raphael's Madonna della Sedia in the galleries of Aachen as a boy.

Landscapes & Secular Works

Winter Cabin pastel, 1933

Autumn Valley oil on canvas

Moonlit Cottage oil on canvas

Coastal Scene oil on canvas

Mallard Rising oil on canvas, 1964

Hover over each painting to see its title. Click to enlarge. Winter Cabin (1933) is the earliest dated work in the archive. Mallard Rising (1964), signed at age 80, is among his last. The Eifel landscapes Pete walked as a boy appear throughout his Arkansas work.

Andrew Peter Finken (left, in bow tie) receiving the DAR Americanism Medal, Stuttgart, Arkansas, circa 19661968. Photographed shortly before his death on May 27, 1968.

The 48-star American flag Pete flew at his Stuttgart home among the first in Stuttgart to display it. The flag precedes Alaska and Hawaii's statehood (1959).

The Arts Center of the Grand Prairie opened in October 1982 fourteen years after Pete's death a direct realization of the vision he had championed. Pete's descendant Scott William Fredrick Carle was found by Cornel's German descendants through Pete's art website: the paintings that brought Pete to Arkansas brought two family branches back together, a century apart.

The war memorial at Schönthal, Eifel the names of Theodor Finken and Johann Finken among the fallen. Three of Pete's brothers are recorded here. He left for America seven years before the war took them.