Antoinette Pauline de Courcelles (also spelled des Courcelles) was truly a unique figure at the end of the eighteenth century. Known also as Mme. Knip while married for a time to the Dutch painter Joseph Knip, she was a woman artist working sucessfully in a man's world. A pupil of the great bird painter, Brraband, she served as painter to two Empresses, Josephine & Marie Louise, and held several commissions from the Sevres porcelain factory. Best known for illustrations done for a study by Temmick of the pigeon genra , she was almost as famous for her conivery as for her magnificently detailed bird studies. Through aggressive manipulation she claimed she, not Temmick, was the author as well as the illustrator of the sumptious study and it was years before history uncovered her trickery.