These works were classified as lesbian erotica at times and many were inspired by her partner, transgender painter Lili Elbe.

[2] Later on in France, Wegener created work showing women displaying seductive power or engaging in sexual activities.

[1] Along with shifting how women are represented in art, Wegener also challenged gender and sex identity roles in her work.

[1] She did this in small ways, such as drawing men with slender bodies and soft lines, or by painting her transgender partner, Lili Elbe.

[1] She then was the center of a controversy called the Peasant Painter Dispute after one of her 1906 works, Portrait of Ellen von Kohl, was rejected from the exhibitions of Den frie Udstilling and Charlottenborg due to the style of the piece.

[1] This piece caused concerns of Italian Renaissance plagiarism and split opinions of it showing a weak individual or an elegant beautiful woman.

She did art in Paris, but was less successful in Denmark, where people found her work very different and strange as it often portrayed her husband as a woman.

[2] In Paris, Wegener began to push the boundaries in her artwork by creating more provocative paintings of women engaged in sexual activities and seductive positions.

[2] Her illustrations were used in a wide range of platforms from beauty advertisements to political anti-German images in the Le Matin and the La Baïonnette during World War II.

In 1913, the art world was shocked when they learned that the model who had inspired her depictions of petite femmes fatales was in fact her "husband".

[3] In 1931, Wegener married Italian officer, aviator, and diplomat Major Fernando Porta and moved with him to Morocco.

Gerda Wegener is portrayed by Swedish actress Alicia Vikander in the 2015 film The Danish Girl, also starring British actor Eddie Redmayne as Lili Elbe.