Limner

• 1. Introduction

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  The word limner entered European practice, by Charles Lock Eastlake's account, in the age of Dante. Eastlake lived from 1793 to 1865. In Methods and Materials of Painting, he quoted a medieval guide. That guide placed limning no later than 'the thirteenth, or beginning of the fourteenth, century.' The same passage called it the art which in Paris was called illuminating. At its simplest, a limner was someone who illuminated manuscripts or painted ornamental decoration. But the word traveled far from those medieval origins, acquiring different meanings in different places. The questions it raises, about who counted as a limner and what the title implied, do not have one answer.

• 2. London and the Crown

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  David Laurent de Lara set up his practice in London around the middle of the nineteenth century. He worked as a modern illuminator of manuscripts and documents. De Lara helped establish illumination as a contemporary artform in its own right, rather than a historical one.

  Scotland's Royal Household also held a formal position that carried the word limner: His Majesty's Painter and Limner. The role is unique to Scotland, honorary, and held for life. Dame Elizabeth Blackadder was the most recent holder, a position she kept until her death in 2021. Across the Atlantic, the same word attached to a very different kind of career. There was no royal institution, no appointed tenure, and no guarantee of staying in one place.

• 3. American Limners

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  Among colonial America's rising merchant class, a limner was sometimes not a person but a product. It referred to an unattributed portrait, ordered as a signal of social standing. Landowners and merchants posed in their finest clothes, in well-appointed interiors, or in landscapes chosen to display their property and good taste. The painters who made these works often had little or no formal training. In early nineteenth-century America, they typically moved from town to town, soliciting commissions along the way.

  Charles Codman of Maine was one artist who worked in this tradition before making his name as a landscape painter. The Eastern Argus, on the 1st of April 1831, described him as an 'ornamental and sign painter' and a 'limner.' His advertised services included 'Military, Standard, Fancy, Ornamental, Masonic and Sign Painting.' In British Columbia, artists would eventually adopt the same old word for a very different collective venture.

• 4. The Victoria Limners

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  The Victoria Limners Society formed in Victoria, British Columbia in 1971. It remained active until 2008.

  Maxwell Bates was one of thirteen artists in the society. The full roster also included Pat Martin Bates, Richard Ciccimarra, Robert De Castro, Colin Graham, and Helga Grove. Jan Grove, Elza Mayhew, Myfanwy Pavelic, Carole Sabiston, Herbert Siebner, Robin Skelton, and Karl Spreitz completed the group. Together they worked across painting, sculpting, pottery, and other forms of visual art. By adopting the name 'limners,' these artists claimed an ancient title for a very different kind of practice. By 2008, the old word limner had served, for thirty-seven years, as the name of a community spanning painting, sculpture, and pottery.