Artist, extremely reclusive, seldom seen (4)
I believe the answer is:
rare
'seldom seen' is the definition.
(thesaurus)
'artist extremely reclusive' is the wordplay.
'artist' becomes 'ra' (Royal Academician, member of Royal Academy of Arts).
'extremely' says to hollow out the word (remove centre letters).
'reclusive' with its centre removed is 're'.
'ra'+'re'='RARE'
(Other definitions for rare that I've seen before include "Not easily come by like undercooked meat" , "thin on the ground" , "Not found often" , "Very infrequent, lightly cooked" , "(Of meat) red" .)