painterly

adjective

paint·​er·​ly ˈpān-tər-lē 

1

: of, relating to, or typical of a painter : artistic

painterly attention to detail

2

: suggestive or characteristic of a painting or of the art of painting

painterly photography

especially : marked by an openness of form which is not linear and in which sharp outlines are lacking

painterly brushwork

painterliness noun

Examples of painterly in a Sentence

He has a painterly eye.

a painterly picture of the sea

Recent Examples on the Web

There’s a painterly look to the image, rather than the typical slop-style sickly sheen, but the AI origins are still unmistakable. —Cath Virginia, The Verge, 11 Apr. 2026

Huge windows frame painterly views of the mountain landscape. —Tori Latham, Robb Report, 10 Apr. 2026

Three-dimensional calla lilies add a painterly touch to dark purple French tips. —Ariel Wodarcyk, InStyle, 10 Apr. 2026

Meis moves from the Baroque virtuosity of Rubens’s study of a drunken mythological figure, through the jagged modernist puzzle of Marc’s allegorical animals, to Mitchell’s painterly abstractions and their flickering landscape allusions. —Jed Perl, The New York Review of Books, 4 Apr. 2026

Word History

First Known Use

circa 1586, in the meaning defined at sense 1