old master

noun

1. an eminent artist of an earlier period, especially from the 15th to the 18th centuries.

2. a work by such an artist.

old master

noun

1. one of the great European painters of the period 1500 to 1800

2. a painting by one of these

Word History and Origins

Origin of old master¹

First recorded in 1945–50

Example Sentences

Now that it’s an auction house, the public can walk in free and view a regularly revolving slate of offerings, from rare books to old master paintings to dinosaur skeletons, depending on the sale calendar.

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To teach himself to paint, he copied from old masters in the Louvre and from plants and taxidermic animals in Paris’s natural history museums.

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"A glorious painting by an old master would be too striking," she said.

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Developing country finance ministers were making the same half-joke about Britain, the old master, now being the crisis economy.

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But we can celebrate now what Bellocchio, a driven old master, has achieved: a heartfelt thriller of intensity and intimacy in which getting saved looks an awful lot like being lost.

Read more on Los Angeles Times