I agree that making copies of some masters can be useful for growing in a direction consonant with being a contemporary portraitist (not people dressed in modern clothes painted in a hundred year-old style, or worse, people dressed in antique costume to justify an old style).

For me, the great transitional portraitist was Sir Thomas Lawrence. His times kept him to painting smoothly render flesh, but everything else was subject to his astonishing brushwork. In a way, he brightened Velazquez's approach into something that has remained valid for quite a time.

I had always admired his approach to a saucy and lively Elizabeth Farren...so coquettish and seductive. He transfixes the viewer with her sidelong gaze and the liquid paint handling hold all of the secrets to how to paint.

This is a large copy that I made (about 70" tall). The photo isn't as good as I'd like and the light is reflecting into one section, but it does demonstrate getting into his head and trying to learn from it. In the course of painting it, Elizabeth took on a presence for me and I have it on a wall in the studio. Every morning, when I go to the studio, there she is down at the other end, welcoming me. It's a nice way to start the day.

Here are some details of the brushwork

Howard's quote:
Copying the masters is certainly a great learning tool, because we are confronted not soley with pastiche, but with a re-definition of the past in terms of the present in our own work. The importance lies here....L

This is one of my favorites and you have done a wonderful copy. I did a copy of the Calmody children and in doing so, I learned a lot from Lawrence.

However, I do disagree with your statement: How a person chooses to dress and the style that a painter chooses to work in, need not conform to some arbitrary standard of anyone's taste. Personally I would prefer to not paint a kid in a T-shirt, but I would certainly not judge it to be "wrong" or "bad" for any artist to do so.

Also, if an artist cannot paint in a style that you consider "old," this would sadly narrow the creative range of ways that any of us might feel drawn to explore or paint.

Quite frankly, I think that most artists do not paint in an "old style" because they lack the technical skills...it isn't someting commonly taught nowadays in art schools.