naturalistnoun/ˈnæ.tʃə.ɹə.lɪst/

• 1

  obsoleteA natural philosopher; a scientist.

  • It has also been asserted, by some naturalists, that men do not attain their full growth and strength till thirty; but that women arrive at maturity by twenty.
• 2

  human-sciencesphilosophysciencesA person who believes in or advocates the tenets of philosophical or methodological naturalism.

• 3

  An expert in natural history or the study of plants and animals.

  • I will leave off all my childish fooleries and diversions, and set about studying with such a rage, that when you come back next year, you may find the tongue I have now in my mouth more forky than that of some serpents mentioned by Pliny the naturalist.
  • The beauty and brilliancy of this insect are indescribable, and none but a naturalist can understand the intense excitement I experienced when I at length captured it.
• 4

  artartsA creative artist who attempts to faithfully represent nature; an adherent of artistic naturalism.

naturalistadj/ˈnæ.tʃə.ɹə.lɪst/

• 1

  Synonym of naturalistic.

  • Trinity received “Birds of America” in 1900 as a gift from Dr. Gordon Russell, a physician and alumnus who was a collector of ornithological and naturalist art.
  • Its author – Henry Handel Richardson was the nom de plume of Ethel Florence Lindesay Richardson – had indeed read, and on occasion translated, these great European writers and they provided the naturalist style and intellectual inquiry resonant in all her fiction. […] The honesty and authorial detachment that is so remarkable in her work – she is one of the least obtrusive, least judgmental of all the great naturalist writers – seems to come from a distance, almost as though the particularly acute insight of the adult writer could only be seen through the filter of childhood experience.