Lars Hertervig was a Norwegian painter. His semi-fantastical work with motives from the coastal landscape in the traditional district of Ryfylke

Ryfylke

Ryfylke is a traditional district in Norway, located northeast of Stavanger and east of Haugesund. In the east it borders Setesdal and Sirdal.Ryfylke comprises the contemporary municipalities of Sauda, Suldal, Finnøy, Hjelmeland, Forsand, Strand, Kvitsøy and Rennesøy...

 is regarded as one of the peaks of Norwegian painting.

Background

Lars Hertervig was born in 1830 at Hattarvagen, in the municipality Tysvær

Tysvær

Tysvær is a municipality in Rogaland county, Norway. It is part of the region of Haugaland. The municipality is located at the northern side of Boknafjord, east of Karmøy. Tysvær has a population of 9,349 and an area of 419 km². Aksdalsvatnet is a lake in this municipality.Local...

 in Norway

Norway

Norway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic unitary constitutional monarchy whose territory comprises the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, Jan Mayen, and the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard and Bouvet Island. Norway has a total area of and a population of about 4.9 million...

, from which the family name derives, on the west coast of Norway, north of Stavanger

Stavanger

Stavanger is a city and municipality in the county of Rogaland, Norway.Stavanger municipality has a population of 126,469. There are 197,852 people living in the Stavanger conurbation, making Stavanger the fourth largest city, but the third largest urban area, in Norway...

. His family were poor, Quaker farmers. Hertervig studied painting at the Arts Academy of Düsseldorf

Kunstakademie Düsseldorf

The Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, formerly Staatliche Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, is the Arts Academy of the city of Düsseldorf. It is well known for having produced many famous artists, such as Joseph Beuys, Gerhard Richter, Sigmar Polke, Thomas Demand, and Andreas Gursky...

 from 1852, as the private pupil of Hans Gude

Hans Gude

Hans Fredrik Gude was a Norwegian romanticist painter and is considered along with Johan Christian Dahl to be one of Norway's foremost landscape painters...

, until he experienced a temporary mental breakdown two years later, and moved back to the Stavanger

Stavanger

Stavanger is a city and municipality in the county of Rogaland, Norway.Stavanger municipality has a population of 126,469. There are 197,852 people living in the Stavanger conurbation, making Stavanger the fourth largest city, but the third largest urban area, in Norway...

 area. In October 1856, Hertervig entered Gaustad asylum

Gaustad Hospital

Gaustad Hospital is a psychiatric hospital located at Gaustad in Oslo, Norway. Founded in 1855, it is part of Aker University Hospital. Since 1 January 2009, Aker University Hospital has been part of Oslo University Hospital, a subsidiary of the Southern and Eastern Norway Regional Health Authority....

.

Career

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 breakthrough came at the Jubilee Exhibition in Kristiania (now Oslo) in 1914, twelve years after his death.

Jon Fosse

Jon Fosse

Jon Fosse is a Norwegian author and dramatist.Fosse was born in Haugesund, Norway and currently lives in Bergen. He debuted in 1983 with the novel Raudt, svart . His first play, Og aldri skal vi skiljast, was performed and published in 1994. Jon Fosse has written novels, short stories, poetry,...

 created an homage to Hertervig with his 1995 novel Melancholia I, and also wrote the libretto for Georg Friedrich Haas

Georg Friedrich Haas

Georg Friedrich Haas is an Austrian composer of spectral music.He grew up in Tschagguns and studied composition with Gösta Neuwirth, Iván Erőd, and piano with Doris Wolf at the Musikhochschule in Graz...

's opera adaptation Melancholia which premiered at the Opera Garnier in Paris on 9 June 2008 on stage by Stanislas Nordey (Lawrence Olivier Award 2008 for a new opera) and costumes of Raoul Fernandez.

Other sources

• Borgen, Trond. Et indre eksil : et essay om Lars Hertervigs papirarbeider. Wigestrand, 2005. ISBN 82-8140-027-7
• Lars Hertervig : fragmenter : arbeider på papir 1868-1902. Labyrinth, 2005. (Exhibition catalog). ISBN 978-82-7393-031-6
• Koefoed, Holger. Lars Hertervig : lysets maler. Gyldendal, 1984. ISBN 82-05-14982-8
• Koefoed, Holger. I Lars Hertervigs skog. Gyldendal, 1991 ISBN 82-05-19169-7
• Fosse, Jon
  Jon Fosse
  Jon Fosse is a Norwegian author and dramatist.Fosse was born in Haugesund, Norway and currently lives in Bergen. He debuted in 1983 with the novel Raudt, svart . His first play, Og aldri skal vi skiljast, was performed and published in 1994. Jon Fosse has written novels, short stories, poetry,...
  
  . Melancholia I. 1995.
• Fosse, Jon. Melancholia II. 1996.