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They probably looked depressed because they lived in Ye Olde Days and they had bad teeth so they couldn't smile.
I used to have a picture of my friend and I in old timey dress. I think it was western, but they said not to smile. It took longer to expose the film so they asked people not to since there was less chance of blurring. All the old photos I had nobody smiled.
When they did drawings, they often drew people as thoughtful and dignified.
As for recognizing yourself, I saw a portrait of an ancestor from the 1700's and he looked just like my grandfather.
If not photos, some things like war draft cards have a physical description. The WW2 ones have more information and more accurate, for instance a height instead of short/medium/tall. But I can't say any of those descriptions have ever been surprising.
A young me looked almost exactly like my paternal grandmother when she was young. The facial features are the same, but the skin and hair coloring different. She and her father had olive skin and dark hair, which my dad, my brother, my niece and one of my daughters inherited. I got the coloring and height of my paternal grandfather's family - light skin, light hair, short. I wish they had smiled in those pictures, but they are always so serious looking and you can't see their teeth! But then, their teeth probably weren't in good repair and they didn't really want them showing in the pictures. I love that I look so much like my grandmother that I never met. She died long before I was born. I hope to meet her someday!
I have photos of my mother's parents, both born in the 19th Century, but, not my fathers parents, but, his siblings say he was tow-headed most of his childhood, as was one of his sons, my brother. There is little doubt most of my ancestors came from the UK and the Netherlands. I did not resemble my mother at all until I began getting older. I shocked myself one day when looking in a mirror how much I could see my mother. My daughter looks like one of her dad's cousins, but, her husband says sometimes when she looks a certain way, she reminds him of me. My son looks like both his dad and me.
I have a female cousin who looks like our Great-Grandma in her younger pictures. It's funny because my grandma is a mixed bag with her two parents and her daughter (cousins Mom, my aunt) doesn't look like my great grandma, although she resembles my grandma.
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