* S: (n) portraitist, portrait painter, portrayer, limner (a painter or drawer of portraits)
http://wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=...A limner is simply an artist or painter, although the term has come to be used specifically in reference to painters in the North American colonies who worked during the 18th and 19th centuries. Limners were often anonymous, traveling from town to town in search of work, and these artists collectively created a large body of work of varying quality. Examples of work by limners can sometimes be seen in museums, especially in North America, and work also shows up in antique stores and private collections of historical items.
The word “limner” is derived from “illustrator,” and originally it was used to refer to the people who illuminated manuscripts of books with rich colors and detailed paintings. The term was also used more generically to discuss painters in general, and over time "limner" was adopted to describe the largely uneducated painters who populated the American colonies.
A limner essentially taught himself the fundamentals of painting, and rarely turned down commissions for work.
The art of limners adorns clock faces, fire screens, indoor murals, and signs, for example. Limners also of course produced paintings on canvas, often portraits of the prominent people in a town or city. Such portraits typically included a background which was meant to imply wealth and erudition, and they were hung in offices, boardrooms, and so forth.
http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-a-limner.htmI knew what it was to limn, but not what it was to be a limner, before I read this story. It's an interesting thing,
the life of a traveling artist, one who will never make more than a pittance for his impressive work and philosophical considerations.
http://ireadashortstorytoday.com/2009/01/juli...It is telling that artists of the Colonial and Federal period often called themselves limners. The word was first employed during the Medieval period to refer to the
illuminators of manuscripts, but by the Sixteenth Century artists - particularly portraitists - had adopted the name.
http://antiquesandthearts.com/archive/limner.htmlimn [lɪm]
vb (tr)
1. (Fine Arts & Visual Arts / Art Terms) to represent in drawing or painting
2. Archaic to describe in words
3. (Fine Arts & Visual Arts / Art Terms) an obsolete word for illuminate
[from Old French enluminer to illumine (a manuscript) from Latin inlūmināre to brighten, from lūmen light]
limner [ˈlɪmnə] n
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/limn
