The present lot features a portrait of Frederick Norton Finney (1832 - 1916), a railroad executive and construction engineer. According to the Wisconsin Historical Society, he attended Oberlin College and, after practicing law, he began his long career as a railroad construction engineer, building lines in Ohio, Michigan, Illinois, and Pennsylvania. Returning to Wisconsin, he settled in Milwaukee and became associated with the Wisconsin Central R.R. (1878) where he served as general manager (1878-1886) and managing director (1886-1888). While with Wisconsin Central, he organized the subsidiary firm of Colby and Finney Construction Co., which built the line from Abbotsford to Chippewa Falls and St. Paul. He was an organizer of the Wisconsin Union Trust Co. (1890). Around 1899 he left Wisconsin and spent several years involved in railroad building in the Southwest. He was president of the Missouri, Kansas and Oklahoma R.R. (1904-1907) and retired to Pasadena, California in 1907.
In 1891 he privately published Three Months in Italy, in which he described his daily activities while traveling there in 1888-89. The present cameo bears the date 1889 on the reverse and was acquired by Finney as a souvenir; given its exquisite quality it was likely executed by a talented Italian cameo cutter. Finney was an art patron, closely linked with leading American artists and architects including American Renaissance painter Kenyon Cox (his nephew) and architect Cass Gilbert.
