From this period she appeared in all the Paris exhibitions, and in many of those of the provincial towns, her reputation rising every year, and several bronze and silver medals being awarded to her productions. In 1844 she exhibited, with her paintings, “A Bull” in clay, one of the many proofs she has given of powers that would have raised her to a high rank as a sculptor, had she not, at length, been definitively drawn, by the combined attractions of form and color, into the ranks of the painters. In the following year she exhibited twelve paintings--a splendid collection--flanked by the works of her father and her brother Auguste, then admitted for the first time. In 1846 her productions were accompanied by those of her father and both her brothers, the younger of whom then first appeared as a sculptor. The family group was completed in a subsequent exhibition by the admission of her younger sister, Julietta, who had returned to Paris, and had also become an artist. In 1849 her magnificent “Cantal Oxen” took the gold medal. Horace Vernet, president of the committee of awards, proclaimed the new laureat in presence of a brilliant crowd of amateurs, presenting her with a superb Sèvres vase in the name of the government; the value of a triumph which placed her ostensibly in the highest rank of her profession being immeasurably enhanced in her eyes by the unbounded delight it afforded to her father. Raymond Bonheur, released from pecuniary difficulty, and rejuvenated by the joy of his daughter’s success, had accepted the directorship of the government school of design for girls, and resumed his palette with all the ardor of his younger days. But his health had been undermined by the fatigues and anxieties he had borne so long, and he died of heart disease in 1849, deeply regretted by his family. Rosa, who had aided him in the school of design, was now made its directress. She still holds the post, her sister, Madame Peyrol, being the resident professor, and Rosa superintending the classes in a weekly lesson. Her already brilliant reputation was still farther enhanced by the appearance, in 1849, of her noble “Plowing Scene in the Nivernais,” ordered by the government, and now in the Luxembourg Gallery; of the “Horse-market,” in 1853, the preparatory studies for which occupied her during eighteen months; and the “Hay-making,” in 1855. The last two works created great enthusiasm in the public mind.