A member beginning in 1901 of the Waldensian Society of Fine Arts, which he would chair between 1929 and 1932, he moved to Paris in 1904 to learn painting and worked in the studio of Jean-Paul Laurens at the Académie Julian.

In 1910, lacking the means to achieve before 1906 the paintings provided by the architect Gaspard André, Louis Rivier offered a monumental decoration for the Palais de Rumine.

The mural combines science, art, and religion in the service of uplifting humanity, and a religious character consistent with the outcome of the Reformation.

The decoration of l'Aula of the Palais de Rumine made the artist celebrated in the region thanks to laudatory book reviews published in the press.

Between 1937 and 1939, Rivier abandoned the tempera and invented a special process combining crayons, chalk, paint thinner and spray.

The post-war period left it marginalized, even if its production characterized by easel painting and large murals continued to be appreciated in German Switzerland and abroad where he received a gold medal at the Salon de la Société des artistes français à Paris in 1949 and also the Conseil supérieur des récompenses "Arts, Sciences, Lettres" in Paris in 1958.