He is buried in the Cimetière du Nord in a chapel built by his brother-in-law Emmanuel Le Ray, a municipal architect.

In 1906, he ran as deputy for Ille-et-Vilaine against René Le Hérissé and Mr. Jaouen in the first constituency of the Arrondissement of Rennes.

He began his first collection of insects at nine years old, and went on to acquire the collections of Jean Baptiste Boisduval (1799–1879), Achille Guenée (1809–1880), Jean-Baptiste Eugène Bellier de la Chavignerie (1819–1888), Adolphe de Graslin (1802–1882), Constant Bar (1817–1884), Emmanuel Martin (1827– 1897), Antoine Barthélemy Jean Guillemot and Henry Walter Bates (1825–1892).

This immense collection, at the end of his life, contained five million specimens in 15,000 glass topped boxes of 50 x 39 cm.

[1] Upon Oberthür's death, his brother René received 55,000 skipper butterflies from the collection, which he later sold to the British Natural History Museum in 1931.