limner

American  

[lim-ner] / ˈlɪm nər /

noun

1. a person who paints or draws.

2. an itinerant painter of 18th-century America who usually had little formal training.

3. a person who describes or depicts in words.

   an essayist known as a fine limner of prominent people and their careers.

4. an illuminator of medieval manuscripts.

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Etymology

Origin of limner

1350–1400; Middle English lymnour, lymynour; see limn, -or ², -er ¹

Example Sentences

New England folk art and furniture are more prominent than ever, with limner portraits, including at least three by the self-taught painter Ammi Philips being especially notable this year.

From New York Times • Jan. 23, 2014

He and Velasquez studied together and were born within a year of each other, but their characters as artists were utterly different; one was a grand chamberlain, the other a preacher and limner.

From Time Magazine Archive

Most tireless limner of Lawrence was stocky, dark-mustached Eric Kennington, who did the firm-jawed bust Lawrence used as frontispiece for his Seven Pillars of Wisdom, and endless drawings of him and his Arab friends.

From Time Magazine Archive

Here was their lesson in making it: the teen-age limner who, thanks to Rome and practical ambition, rose to become the second president of the Royal Academy.

From Time Magazine Archive

As it is, you might imagine his sketches to be the result of the combined simultaneous efforts of two artists—one the delicate limner, the other the vulgar dauber and scene-painter above spoken of.

From Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 60, No. 373, November 1846 by Various