Lars Hertervig (February 16, 1830 – January 6, 1902) was a Norwegian painter. His semi-fantastical work with motives from the coastal landscape in the traditional district of Ryfylke is regarded as one of the peaks of Norwegian painting.
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Lars Hertervig was born in 1830 at Hattarvagen, in the municipality Tysvær in Norway, from which the family name derives, on the west coast of Norway, north of Stavanger. His family were poor, Quaker farmers. Hertervig studied painting at the Arts Academy of Düsseldorf from 1852, as the private pupil of Hans Gude, until he experienced a temporary mental breakdown two years later, and moved back to the Stavanger area. In October 1856, Hertervig entered Gaustad asylum.[1]
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 created an homage to Hertervig with his 1995 novel Melancholia I, and also wrote the libretto for Georg Friedrich Haas'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.