The art historian Albert Boime laconically notes, in an article from 1964 on La Musée des Copies, “that the favorable attitude towards the copies produced for the Musée des Études was expressed a year before the Revolution of 1848; by 1871 it will have been completely reversed. The loss of the Ecole’s grip over the national art and the undermining of academic training discredited the essential value of copies.” 4