(b Alençon, Orne, 26 Oct 1878; d Versailles, 11 Sept 1954). French draughtswoman, painter and writer. She studied drawing in Paris and then worked with Lucien Simon, René Menard and André Dauchez (1870–1948). She began to paint around 1905 and exhibited at the Salon des Indépendants in Paris. She had a one-woman show in 1910 at the Galerie Eugène Blot in Paris and was then persuaded by her parents to give up her artistic activities. She stopped painting but around 1915 began to concentrate on pastels, charcoal drawing and other graphic arts. Though never participating in the most avant-garde movements of her time, she became associated with Bonnard, Vuillard and Félix Vallotton. In her pastels and charcoal drawings Hervieu most frequently depicted still-lifes and interiors, which she endowed with a sense of mystery. She achieved great dramatic effect by the use of strong chiaroscuro drawing, as in Woman at a Console (1922; Paris, Pompidou). She also devoted much time to book illustration, providing plates for editions of Charles Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du mal (Paris, 1920) and Le Spleen de Paris (Paris, 1922), among others. Since childhood Hervieu had suffered from inherited chronic meningitis, which caused her eyesight to deteriorate. Around 1927 she was forced to abandon the visual arts and she turned her attention to writing. In 1925 a group of artists that included Bonnard, Maurice Denis, Picasso, Rouault and André Lhote illustrated her book L’Ame du cirque (1925). Her novel Sangs won the Prix Femina in 1935.