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Maybe, but are we really trying to go back? It's true, we don't have a clue how future art historians will classify us. Maybe they will see us as Pre-Cezanne! But then the realists working today have been influenced in so many ways by modern art. I can't imagine your beautiful double portrait for the opera existing without the influence of modern art.
I see tradition in two ways. I see it as a continuum that has a leading edge comprised of today's artists. Everything that we have at our fingertips, so to speak, from compositional possibilities to new technologies, are the products of what has gone before. Everything we do is grounded in the work that has gone before. When Sargent was painting, he was as modern as Cezanne, though maybe he wasn't perceived as such at the time. I have a hard time looking back and not including the modern movement in the continuum.
But then, on the other hand, I know what you mean when you say you think of traditional portraiture as "pre-Cezanne." There is the whole idea of being "traditional" which most definitely does not include abstract, conceptual art. If I look back from this perspective I can't help seing modern art as an odd kind of blip on the continuum of art history, though personally I like a lot of "contemporary" art and I am just as inspired by Alice Neel as by the more "realistic" painters. (I can't say I'm too fond of installations, though.)
I guess we are somehow grounded in tradition, no matter what style we are working in.
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