Syphilitic of birth, of very fragile health, Louise Hervieu revealed a gift for drawing from her childhood. Discouraged after the failure of her unique exhibition of paintings in oil in 1910, she abandoned painting in favor of drawing and lithography. She illustrated les Fleurs du mal and le Spleen de ParisbyBaudelaire. She published collections of drawings and novels that she embellished with her illustrations. She was close to the painter Edmond-Marie Poullain [fr], with whom she traveled several times to Bréhal. In 1915, the weakening of her sight forced her to go from color to black and white. A refined valorist, her technique of drawing in the wash or charcoal was characterized by the removal of certain parts of the surface of the work to obtain clear nuances by making reappear the white of the paper.
One of her works, le Bon Vouloir, was crowned by the Académie française and another one, Sangs, was awarded the prix Femina in 1936. This award allowed her to give great publicity to the battle she led throughout her life against this scourge that made her suffer constantly.
It is to Louise Hervieu that is also owed the attribution, obtained from a hard struggle in 1938, of a "health notebook", by the public authorities, to every newborn child, and in which would have been inscribed the antecedents of the parents, then all the care, all the diseases of the child, and then of the adult until his/her death, to serve in turn to keep his/her children and grandchildren healthy.
The Association Louise Hervieu for the establishment of the health notebook, was created for this purpose. On 1 June 1939, finally, a ministerial decree instituted the health card for the use of French citizens. This notebook unfortunately only had an ephemeral existence.
Pierre Courthion, Panorama de la peinture française contemporaine, Simon Kra, 1927, (pp. 142–145)
Claude Roger-Marx, Éloge de Louise Hervieu, Manuel Bruker Éditeur, 1953
Guillaume d’Enfert, Louise Hervieu et Bretteville-sur-Ay. Hommage à Louise Hervieu, publié à l’occasion du 2e Salon des écrivains du terroir de Bretteville-sur-Ay, Éditions du Jardin d’Eden, 2004
Sanchez Nelly, « Prix Femina 1936 : Sangs de Louise Hervieu », New Zealand Journal of French Studies, 2013, n°2, vol. 34, (pp. 41–54)
Sanchez Nelly, « Louise Hervieu, dessinatrice et littératrice », La Corne de Brume, 2013, n°10, (pp. 41–46)
