Exhibited: Ole Haslunds Hus, Copenhagen, cat. no. 16 and 22. Provenance: Private collection, Denmark. Gift from the artist.

Gerda Wegener is born in Hobro in 1885, as the daughter of a minister. Coming from a traditional, conservative background, an artistic career is not in the cards for her – and certainly not one of such a sensational and scandalous nature as fate would have it. However, her talent can’t be denied, and she trains as a painter at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts’ School of Art for Women. While she did not consider her time at the academy to be of particular importance to her artistic development, it is a time of great importance on a personal level, as it is here that she meets her future husband, Einar Wegener, in the spring of 1902. The couple travels to the more free-spirited Paris in 1912, where Gerda Wegener builds a stable reputation for herself. In Paris, she is in demand as a supplier of drawings and illustrations, both for racy erotic literature – often with a focus on relationships between women – advertisements, newspapers, and the most fashionable magazines of the day.

Wegener uses her husband as a muse. In the many portraits of slender, long-limbed female figures, he often poses dressed in women’s clothing, wearing various wigs, and thus a new life is gradually born. Wegeners marriage is annulled in 1930, when Einar, following the transformation into Lili Ilse Elvenes – better known as Lili Elbe – undergoes what is known as the first gender reassignment surgery and is physically and legally accepted as a woman.

The two cohesive works on offer here show Einar posing against an evening sky – judging from the silhouette of the mountains on Capri, which the couple visited in 1924. The portraits illustrate Wegener's fine empathy with and acceptance of her husband's dual gender identity.

Gerda Wegener is, in many ways, a woman ahead of her time, but from her death in 1940 and until recent day, very little is heard about her. Following a number of exhibitions and the film “The Danish Girl” she has been reinterpreted in light of her artistic talent, female perspective and unconventional marriage. She is currently in demand like never before among Danish and foreign collectors - and secured a place in art history.