Portrait of a Lady | Fabulous Antique Fashions from Paintings

Why don't women get their portraits painted anymore? Gosh, they're so damn romantic! I imagine it's because no one really paints like this anymore and no one has the TIME or PATIENCE to sit for a portrait. I just love the idea of it. I wonder how I'd look painted. I wonder what I'd wear. Can you imagine what sort of process it must have been to get dressed for a portrait?

How does one even begin to think about that? Do you wear your favorite dress or the colors best suited for you? Or perhaps that is the same thing, perhaps your favorite dress is in your favorite color. 

Past the wardrobes in these gorgeous paintings of women, I am always so transfixed by their expressions and the lighting on their faces and their surroundings. Which of these portraits is your favorite and why? I mean think about that, why does THAT woman have your attention versus another?

Mademoiselle Vaughan by Paul Helleu

Juliette Gordon Low -Founder of the Girl Scouts of the USA. Painted 1887 by Edward Robert Hughes.

Michael Conrad Hirt, 1642

Portrait of a young lady, bust-length, in a pink dress decorated with rosettes, by Jean-Etienne Liotard (1702-1789)

Julius LeBlanc Stewart - "Portrait of a Lady" - 1892

This one I adore because it's so NEW compared to all the others above. This is a portrait from 1944! Herbert James Gunn: Pauline in the Yellow Dress, c.1944

 Self-portrait Anna Bilinska-1857-1893