Louise HERVIEU

The 20th century art historian and critic Claude Roger-Marx, a close friend and admirer of the artist, published his Éloge de Louise Hervieu in 1953, a year before her death. In it he described her monochromatic drawings, which he likened to those of Odilon Redon and Georges Seurat: ‘Dark curtains open and we enter a world where Love and Death speak in hushed tones.’ The following year, in his book Maîtres du XIXe siècle et du XXe, he added that, ‘Drawing, for Louise Hervieu, is really about taking possession of the world by giving the word its complete physicality.’ Roger-Marx also wrote the preface to a posthumous exhibition of Hervieu’s drawings and paintings at the Galerie Marie L. André in Paris in 1969.

In 1978 Roger-Marx bequeathed a very large drawing by Hervieu of seashells and a pearl necklace to the Louvre, which owns two further drawings by the artist. Other drawings by Louise Hervieu are in the collections of the Musée National d’Art Moderne in Paris and the museums of Bordeaux, Caen and Nantes.