Alfred William Finch (1854–1930), known as Willy, was born in Brussels on 28 November 1854 to British parents and grew up in Ostend. At twenty-four he spent a year at the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts in Brussels. In 1883 he was a founding member of Les XX, the circle of Belgian artists who rebelled against academic convention.
Impressed by Georges Seurat and Paul Signac, he turned to pointillism and became, with Théo van Rysselberghe, one of its leading Belgian representatives. Finch even carried the technique over to ceramics. In the early 1890s he gave up painting for pottery, having found he could not make a living from his canvases.
In 1897 Count Louis Sparre invited him to Porvoo in Finland to run the Iris ceramics factory, and he stayed in the country for the rest of his life. He later taught ceramics in Helsinki, helped found the Septem group, and through exhibitions brought Impressionism and Neo-Impressionism to Finnish art. When the factory closed he returned to painting. He died in Helsinki on 28 April 1930.