The Divine Sarah Bernhardt (1844-1923) was certainly divine enough to inspire painted portraits along with many, many photographs. Her Wikipedia entry is here and a search for images on Google or Bing will offer many aspects of her.

Unfortunately for us, photos of her taken when in her physical prime are too staged to give much of an impression of her personality. By the time photography became flexible, she was already in her 50s.

So it was left for the painters to capture her spark. Below are some examples I culled from the Web.

Gallery

[Image]Here is a photo to set the stage.

[Image]By Georges-Antoine Rochegrosse

[Image]By Georges Clairin - 1871

[Image]By Georges Clairin - 1876

[Image]By Hans Makart - 1881

[Image]By Louise Abbema

[Image]By Theo van Rysselberghe - 18881

[Image]By Giovanni Boldini

[Image]By Jean-Léon Gérôme - 1895

[Image]By Alphonse Mucha - 1896