Portraitists of the Colonies: The Life and Styles of American Limners (Passage 3)

The earliest known American painters, who were active in the latter part of the seventeenth century and the early part of the eighteenth century, were described in documents, journals, and letters of the time as limners. Most of the paintings created by limners were portraits, and they were unsigned because the finished pieces did not belong to the limners who created them but were instead the possessions of the subjects in the portraits. The portraits today are named after the subjects portrayed in them, and a particular artist is known only as the creator of a particular portrait; thus a particular portrait is named Mrs. Elizabeth Freake and Baby Mary after the people in the portrait, and the limner who created the portrait is known only as the Freake Limner. Art historians who specialize in art from this era have been able to identify clusters of portraits painted by each of a number of limners but, in many cases, do not know the name of the actual limner.

As can be seen from the fact that portraits created by limners went unsigned, limners were regarded more as artisans or skilled tradesmen than as artists. They earned their living as many artisans and tradesmen did at the time, as itinerant workers moving from town to town offering their services to either those who could pay or, more likely, to those who had goods or services to offer in return. They were able to paint portraits for those desiring to have a tangible representation of a family member for posterity; they also took on a variety of other types of painting jobs to stay employed, such as painting the walls of buildings, painting signs for businesses and painting furniture.

38A Some of the early portraits most likely received their education in art or trained others in America in their craft; because they were working in undeveloped or minimally developed colonial areas, their lives were quite difficult. 38B They had little access to information about the world of art and little access to art supplies, so they needed to mix their own paints and make their own brushes and stretched canvasses. 38C They also needed to be prepared to takeon whatever painting jobs were needed to survive. 38D

There seem to be two broad categories of painting styles used by the portraitists, the style of the New English limners and the style of the New York limners. The style of the New England limners was a decorative style with flat characters, characters that seem to lack mass and volume. This is not because the New England limners had no knowledge of painting techniques but was instead because the New England limners were using the style of Tudor painting that became popular during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, a style that included characters with a flat woodenness yet with the numerous highly decorative touches and frills popular in the English court. 

The New York limners had a rather different style from the New England limners, and this was because New York had a different background from the rest of New England. Much of New England had been colonized by the English, and thus the basis for the style of the New England limners was the Tudo style that had been popularized during the Tudor queen Elizabeth I. However, the Dutch had settled the colony of New Amsterdam, and though New Amsterdam became an English colony in 1664 and was renamed New York, the Dutch character and influence was strongly in place during the era of the limners. The New York limners, as a result, were influenced by the Dutch artists of the time rather than the Tudor artists. Dutch art, unlike the more flowery Tudor art, was considerably more sober and prosaic. In addition, the New York limners lacked the flat portrayals of characters of the New England limners and instead made use of light and shade to create more lifelike portraits.