Lars Hertervig (16 February 1830 – 6 January 1902) was a Norwegian painter. His semi-fantastical work with motives from the coastal landscape in the traditional district of

Ryfylke Ryfylke is a Districts of Norway, traditional district in the northeastern part of Rogaland county, Norway. The district, encompassing about 60% of the county's area is located northeast of Stavanger and east of Haugesund. It includes the mainla ...

is regarded as one of the peaks of Norwegian painting.

Life and career

Lars Hertervig was born in 1830 at

Borgøy Borgøy (alternately spelled ''Borgøya'' or ''Borgøyna'') is an island in Tysvær municipality in Rogaland county, Norway. The island is located at the southern end of the Skjoldafjorden. South of the island lies the Hervikfjorden. The hig ...

, in the municipality

Tysvær Tysvær is a List of municipalities of Norway, municipality in Rogaland Counties of Norway, county, Norway. It is part of the Haugalandet Districts of Norway, region. The municipality is located on the Haugalandet peninsula on the northern side ...

Norway Norway, officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic countries, Nordic country located on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. The remote Arctic island of Jan Mayen and the archipelago of Svalbard also form part of the Kingdom of ...

, on the west coast of Norway, north of

Stavanger Stavanger, officially the Stavanger Municipality, is a city and municipalities of Norway, municipality in Norway. It is the third largest city and third largest metropolitan area in Norway (through conurbation with neighboring Sandnes) and the ...

. His family were poor,

Quaker Quakers are people who belong to the Religious Society of Friends, a historically Protestant Christian set of denominations. Members refer to each other as Friends after in the Bible, and originally, others referred to them as Quakers ...

farmers. Hertervig studied painting at the Arts Academy of Düsseldorf from 1852, as the private pupil of

Hans Gude Hans Fredrik Gude (March 13, 1825August 17, 1903) was a Norwegian romanticist painter and is considered along with Johan Christian Dahl to be one of Norway's foremost landscape painters. He has been called a mainstay of Norwegian National Ro ...

. He is associated with the

Düsseldorf school of painting Düsseldorf is the capital city of North Rhine-Westphalia, the most populous state of Germany. It is the second-largest city in the state after Cologne and the List of cities in Germany with more than 100,000 inhabitants, seventh-largest city ...

. In 1854, due to a cruel prank played by his fellow students, he experienced a temporary mental breakdown, and moved back to the Stavanger area. In October 1856, Hertervig entered Gaustad asylum. His last 30 years he struggled financially, and finally ended up at the poorhouse. He could not afford to paint with oil on canvas, and several works from this period are watercolors and gouache on paper not meant for painting, sometimes using bits of papers glued together with homemade rye flour paste. His artistic breakthrough was posthumous, coming at the 1914 Jubilee Exhibition in

Kristiania Oslo ( or ; ) is the capital and most populous city of Norway. It constitutes both a county and a municipality. The municipality of Oslo had a population of in 2022, while the city's greater urban area had a population of 1,064,235 in 2022, an ...

(now Oslo), twelve years after his death in Stavanger.

Popular culture

Odd Kvaal Pedersen wrote ''Narren og hans mester'', a documentary about Lars Hertervig in 1987. Paal-Helge Haugen wrote ''Hertervig: Ein opera'' in 1995.

Jon Fosse Jon Olav Fosse (; born 29 September 1959) is a Norwegian author, translator, and playwright. In 2023, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature "for his innovative plays and prose which give voice to the unsayable." Fosse's work spans over se ...

created an homage to Hertervig with his 1995 novel '' Melancholia I'' and his 1996 sequel '' Melancholy II''. Fosse also wrote the

libretto A libretto (From the Italian word , ) is the text used in, or intended for, an extended musical work such as an opera, operetta, masque, oratorio, cantata or Musical theatre, musical. The term ''libretto'' is also sometimes used to refer to th ...

for ''Melancholia'', an opera adaptation by Georg Friedrich Haas, which premiered at the Opera Garnier in Paris on 9 June 2008 on stage by Stanislas Nordey (

Laurence Olivier Award The Laurence Olivier Awards, or simply The Olivier Awards, are presented annually by the Society of London Theatre to recognize excellence in West End theatre, professional theatre in London. The awards were originally known as the Society of We ...

2008 for a new opera) and costumes of Raoul Fernandez.''Georg Friedrich Haas - Melancholia '' (Universal Edition Aktiengesellschaft)
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Gallery

File:Hertervig Gamle furutrær.jpg, ''Old Pine Trees'', 1865 File:Lars Hertervig - Coastal Landscape - Google Art Project.jpg, ''Coastal Landscape'', 1855 File:Lars Hertervig - The Tarn - Google Art Project.jpg, ''The Tarn'', 1865 File:Lars Hertervig - Island Borgøya - Google Art Project.jpg, ''

Island'', 1867

References

Other sources

* Borgen, Trond (2005) ''Et indre eksil : et essay om Lars Hertervigs papirarbeider'' (Wigestrand Forlags AS) * Fosse, Jon (1995) ''Melancholia I-II'' (Det Norske Samlaget) * Koefoed, Holger (1984) ''Lars Hertervig : lysets maler'' (Gyldendal Norsk Forlag) * Koefoed, Holger (1991) ''I Lars Hertervigs skog'' (Gyldendal Norsk Forlag) * Moe, Ole Henrik (1989) ''Lars Hertervig, en norsk malertragedie'' (Blønda)

External links