Subsequently, Bonnassieux became a teacher at the Ecole. Among his pupils in the 1880s were the young American Lorado Taft and the British-American sculptor Henry Hudson Kitson. A study by A. Le Normand, La Tradition Classique et l'Esprit Romantique: Les sculpteurs de l'académie de France à Rome de 1824 à 1840 (Rome, 1991), places Bonnassieux within the context of the rigorous French academic training of the 19th century, examining the careers of seventeen winners of the Prix de Rome.
The iron statue of Notre-Dame de France overlooking the town of Le Puy-en-Velay is made from 213 Russian cannons taken in the Siege of Sevastopol (1854–1855) and was presented to the public on 12 September 1860 in front of 120,000 people.