Limner
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A limner is an illuminator of manuscripts, or more generally, a painter of ornamental decoration. One of the earliest mentions of a limner's work is found in the book Methods and Materials of Painting by Charles Lock Eastlake (1793–1865).
"The treatises cannot be placed later than the thirteenth or beginning of the fourteenth century. This was the age of Dante, and "the art which in Paris was called illuminating" (limning)."[citation needed]
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[edit] Scotland
The office of Her Majesty's Painter and Limner is a position within the Royal Household unique to Scotland. The position of portrait painter to the royal household is honorary and for life.
[edit] United States
In early 19th Century America a limner artist was one who had little if no formal training. They would travel from place to place to solicit commissions.
Among colonial America's rising mercantile class, a limner was an unattributed portrait commissioned as a status symbol. The local landowners and merchants who commissioned these portraits posed in their finest clothes, in well-appointed interiors, or in landscapes that identified their position, property, good taste, and sophistication.
A late named artist who began in this genre is the Maine landscape artist Charles Codman, who in Eastern Argus (April 1, 1831) is described as an "ornamental and sign painter" or "limner" who practiced "Military, Standard, Fancy, Ornamental, Masonic and Sign Painting".[1]
