Old Master

Old Master.
An imprecise but useful term employed as a blanket phrase to cover European artists (particularly painters) from the Renaissance up to about 1800; the term is applied also to their works, so an Old Master can be a picture as well as a person. Often the term carries an implication of high quality, but this is not necessarily so. In major auction houses, for example, the term is used chronologically rather than aesthetically, as 19th-century and later paintings are usually sold separately from earlier works. Thus an ‘Old Master sale’ may contain entirely undistinguished pictures or even feeble copies as well as masterpieces.