Limner

Derived from a Latin word that means to draw or paint on a surface, the term in American art is applied to self-taught, often itinerant artists of the 18th and early 19th centuries in the Northeastern United States. Regarded as unsophisticated, the work of these artists is frequently described as naive. They worked from a set of templates for poses and backgrounds and filled in faces, which often were generic due to the lack of skill and/or the lack of time of the Limner. It was an era when most persons with art talent did not have schools available to them unless they had enough money to study in Europe. Children were most often the subjects of work by Limners. Source: "Antiques and The Arts Weekly", November 25, 2005, p. 17