The Gansevoort Limner (active 1730- 1745), The Beardsley Limner (ca. 1788–90), The Payne Limner (active ca. 1780 - 1803)

• The Gansevoort Limner, the Beardsley Limner, and the Payne Limner were all terms for unidentified, itinerant Early American portrait artists active in the 18th and early 19th centuries.
• The name "limner" was a general term for self-taught or folk painters who traveled in search of commissions. 

• These artists are named after the prominent families whose portraits formed the basis of identifying a consistent, stylistic body of work, before their actual identities were discovered. 
• Generally untrained and itinerant, limners were a class of artists who helped shape the image of colonial Americans, securing the social status of their middle-class sitters in portraits that convey an air of refinement.
• The Gansevoort Limner tentatively identified by some scholars as Pieter Vanderlyn (c. 1687–1778), a Dutch immigrant who worked in the New York areas of Albany and Kingston.

• The Beardsley Limner the artist's identity remains uncertain, while some evidence suggests the artist might be the Connecticut pastellist Sarah Perkins (1771–1831).

• The Payne Limner identified as William Hodgson, an artist who worked in Virginia in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.

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