limner

limner , the work of untrained, generally anonymous artists active in the English American colonies. Characteristic examples of their paintings show flat, awkward, often frontal figures in richly detailed costumes and landscape settings copied from European prints. The limner tradition extended well into the 19th cent.

limner. A word for a painter that has been used in various ways in different contexts. In the Middle Ages it was applied to manuscript illuminators, and from the 16th century it was used of painters of miniature portraits ( Nicholas Hilliard's treatise is called The Arte of Limning). In terms of American art, it denotes the anonymous and often itinerant painters, particularly portraitists, of the 17th and 18th centuries. Limners in this last sense are sometimes given invented names in the same manner in which the term ‘Master of’ is used in European painting—the Schuyler Limner, named after one of the families he portrayed, is an example.

limner. A word for a painter that has been used in various ways in different contexts. In the Middle Ages it was applied to manuscript illuminators, and from the 16th century it was used of painters of miniature portraits ( Nicholas Hilliard's treatise is called The Arte of Limning). In terms of American art, it denotes the anonymous and often itinerant painters, particularly portraitists, of the 17th and 18th centuries. Limners in this last sense are sometimes given invented names in the same manner in which the term ‘Master of’ is used in European painting—the Schuyler Limner, named after one of the families he portrayed, is an example.