Both Ruth and Rosamund had inherited their mother's adventurous and determined spirit. After their unorthodox education on a remote South African farm, the girls were taken to Europe to further Ruth's artistic and Rosamund's musical studies. Here they were exposed to the vibrant and stimulating Parisian Art scene of the 1920's. Ruth and Rosamund developed the same liberated and strongly independent spirit that characterizes other remarkable women of the era. Uninhibited, unconventional and beautiful, on their return to South Africa in 1926, the sisters brought back something of the glamour of the jazz age to their farm on the highveld. Always the extrovert, with the latest Art Deco- inspired dresses and jewellery from Paris, Rosamund threw extravagant parties and Bonnefoi became the social hub of the region.

Rosamund's paintings of the time dazzle with the enjoyment of Clarice Cliff type colour. The landscape undergoes an artistic transformation in a Rosamund painting as the mountains and valleys become a decorative pattern of flattened and simplified forms.

Although a successful farmer, Rosamund could not adapt to the conventional role accorded to women in farming communities and so, in 1935, embarked on a career as an aviatrix. During the Second World War she joined the South African Air force and later the auxiliary service flying a shuttle service between South Africa and Egypt. She is reportedly the first woman in the world to have piloted a jet aircraft. Rosamund's remarkable life ended tragically in 1946 when she was killed while flying a Spitfire aircraft in England.