I nevertheless had to go ahead at all costs, leaving behind many doubts, many opinions which we knew to be false, with any power to redress them, under penalty of losing everything and never completing the work".

He sold his collection of 381 drawings to the duc d'Aumale for 140000 francs in 1861 and edited a catalogue of them the same year, dedicated to his friend Horace His de la Salle.

In 1862 he became a member of the commission choosing works for the Louvre from the Campana collection – he chose only 97 paintings out of a total of 646 and Ingres, Delacroix and other artists complained.

This led the Académie des Beaux-Arts to also acquire 206 paintings from the collection, meaning a total of 313 could be exhibited in the aile de la Colonnade at the Louvre.

Some attributed this to personal revenge, though he did give the Louvre the 1416 Saint Denis Altarpiece by the French painter Henri Bellechose in 1863, originally in the chartreuse de Champmol.

[3] His friend Louis La Caze gave his collection of 583 paintings to the French nation in 1869 – Reiset selected 272 for the Louvre and sent the others to the museums in the provinces.