As far as I remember, I always loved these big pictures of ancestors. Ofcourse, they are photographs, and not oil paintings... And we might easily agree that they have nothing in common with a De Laszlo signed portrait; They could clearly not imagine to stand next to a picture taken by Cecil Beaton...
Nevertheless, I think that they deserve better than to be forgotten in the attic or worse, simply chucked out by deserving heirs.
Of course, I understand that people would not accept to hang "portraits of foreigners" on their fabulous plasterboard walls... but for the others, for the one that are trying to give a bit of soul and ambience to their home, I think that antique portraits are perfects. 
They instantly make you feel like in a old "family house"... and this is were these are coming from, a big house surrounded by a park with high trees and box edges. It was a house lived in by four generations of members from the same family. It is going to be ripped off to make place for a road enlargment
and so, these ancestors are now in desperate search for a new place...
Do you have any ancestors portraits to show to your descendant? Gabrielle used to tell me that in her mother's house, there was a long hallway from which the walls were covered with that kind of ancestors. It all burned to the ground in 1918...
