Sailor on land entertained by ship paintings (9)
I believe the answer is:
abstracts
'paintings' is the definition.
Although both the answer and definition are plural nouns, I can't understand how they can define each other.
'sailor on land entertained by ship' is the wordplay.
'sailor' becomes 'ab' (abbreviation for able seaman).
'on' means one lot of letters go next to another (in a down clue, letters appear on others).
'land' becomes 'tract' (tract can mean an area of land).
'entertained by' indicates putting letters inside (inserted letters are hosted or entertained).
'ship' becomes 'SS' (prefix in ship names eg SS Great Britain).
'tract' going inside 'ss' is 'stracts'.
'ab'+'stracts'='ABSTRACTS'
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for abstracts that I've seen before include "Summaries; removes" , "Purloins" , "some of Kandinsky's paintings?" .)