After ten years, he went to Oxford, where he promoted his view that the study of art should form an essential part of higher education.
Painting of the murals by such artists associated with the Pre-Raphaelite movement as Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Arthur Hughes, Burne-Jones, and William Morris, had begun in August 1857.
But by March 1858 the project had been left unfinished, so the Oxford Union commissioned Riviere to complete the last remaining three panels.
A miniature of him when a young man, by Charles William Pegler, went to his son Briton Rivière, R.A., one of four children with his wife from 1830 Ann Jarvis, a still-life painter.
His last exhibited work was a portrait of Philip Wynter, president of St John's College, Oxford, which was at the Royal Academy in 1860.