Gerda Wegener: The Complete Story
Gerda Wegener, 1886 to 1940, was a Danish painter and Art Deco illustrator known for two things: her elegant, sensual portraits of women in 1920s Paris, and her marriage to Lili Elbe, one of the first known people to undergo gender confirmation surgery. In her own day she was the bigger star of the two.
The 2015 film The Danish Girl made her a footnote to her spouse. The real Gerda was a celebrated artist who painted the woman she loved into being.
A star of Art Deco Paris
Gerda trained in Copenhagen and moved to Paris in 1912. There she thrived, selling fashion drawings to magazines like Vogue and La Vie Parisienne.
Her signature was the modern woman: sleek, witty, often sensual. She worked in oils but shone in watercolor, with the crisp elegance of Alphonse Mucha carried into the jazz age.
By the 1920s she was a name in her own right, not a wife who painted on the side.
Her world of women
Gerda's art is full of women: lounging, dressing, gazing at each other. Many scenes read as openly desiring, decades before that was easy to publish.
She also made erotic watercolors for private books in Paris, work daring enough that some of it was sold quietly. Her women are confident, never shamed.
It is one reason she fell out of fashion, and one reason she feels current again now.
The woman she painted into being
Gerda married the Danish painter Einar Wegener. Over years of work, Einar increasingly lived as Lili Elbe, and Gerda painted her again and again as her glamorous female model.
Many of Gerda's most admired portraits are of Lili. The art and the relationship grew together.
In 1930 Lili underwent a series of pioneering surgeries in Germany. When her change of legal sex was recognized, the Danish king annulled the marriage in 1930. Lili died in 1931 from complications.
The stocking story, and what the film changed
A popular tale says Gerda discovered Einar's femininity by chance, asking him to stand in for a female model in stockings. It is a charming origin story, but it is not documented fact.
The film smooths the couple into a quiet tragedy. The real Gerda was bohemian, ambitious and openly drawn to sensual subjects, far from the shy wife on screen.
Three works to know her by
First, her portraits of Lili Elbe, where the model and the muse are the same beloved person.
Second, her sun bright scenes of Capri and the Riviera, all parasols, sea light and leisure.
Third, her erotic watercolor suites for Paris collectors, the work that made her a little scandalous and very modern.
Forgotten, then found again
After Lili's death Gerda married an Italian officer, Fernando Porta, and lived for a time in Morocco. The marriage failed, the Art Deco taste she embodied went out of style, and she returned to Denmark.
She died in 1940, poor and largely forgotten. Her rediscovery came late, through David Ebershoff's 2000 novel and the film that followed.
Where her work lives now
In Denmark, the ARKEN Museum of Modern Art mounted a major Gerda Wegener retrospective, which did much to restore her name. Her works also surface regularly at auction.
Gerda Wegener, things people ask
What is Gerda Wegener famous for? Her Art Deco portraits of women, and her marriage to Lili Elbe.
When was she born? In 1886 in Denmark. She died in 1940.
What did Gerda Wegener die from? She died in 1940 after years of declining health and finances, largely forgotten.
Was she more famous than Lili in her time? Yes. In 1920s Paris, Gerda was the established, celebrated artist.
Where are her paintings? In Danish collections, the ARKEN retrospective, and private hands and auctions.
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