Bodies of Modernity offers a wealth of new insights into the representation of masculinity and femininity at a time when gender distinctions were strictly enforced. In late nineteenth-century France, men and women were believed to be polar opposites, and were required to express this in the clothes they wore, the poses they struck and the behaviour they exhibited.

Tamar Garb investigates how these notions can be traced in the representation of men and women in the work of some of the most important painters of the period as well as in a range of other media, including photography, advertising and caricature.