Pigeon – Pauline Knip-Rifer de Courcelles, 1808-1811

“Colombar Commandeur” copper engraving by Pauline Knip-Rifer de Courcelles for “Les Pigeons” with texts by Coenraad Jacob Temminck, published in Paris between 1808 and 1811. With original hand colouring.

Les Pigeons contained scientific descriptions of the order of pigeons and of individual species. Pauline Knip-Rifer de Courcelles (1781–1851), one of the protégées of Empress Joséphine de Beauharnais, made the life-sized illustrations, remarkable above all for their brilliance of colour. She specialized in natural history illustration, a field in which she excelled as one of the most talented illustrators of the early nineteenth century.

The Commandeur is described as follows:

“The length, from the tip of the beak to the end of the tail, is twelve and a half inches; the beak measures eleven lines, it is very thick, broad at the base, the tip is swollen, and the edges of both mandibles are notched. This characteristic seems to indicate that the bird feeds chiefly on certain fruits, whose very hard stones cause fractures in this part. It is not known, however, which fruit this pigeon prefers, since its habits are not yet understood.

The male Commandeur is light bluish-gray over the whole head, extending behind the ear opening; on the breast is a large yellow patch whose extremities run up over the back, where a zone of ashy gray encircles this color; the remainder of the upper parts are dirty apple-green, this color shading into gray on the rump. The small feathers on the “wrist” of the wing, forming a kind of epaulet, are of a fine purplish-brown; the median and greater wing feathers are black, the first fringed with yellowish white, and the latter with olive-yellow, with an additional narrow yellowish-white edging. The belly and the entire underside of the wings are bluish-gray; the thighs are a handsome straw-yellow; the lower tail coverts are reddish, each feather tipped with white. The upper side of the tail is half green and half gray, the latter color prevailing at the tips of all the outer tail feathers, while the two central feathers are entirely green. The underside of the tail is black at the base, passing to grayish-white at the tip. The tarsus is unfeathered and red, as are the toes; the claws and the horny covering of the beak are gray.”

This pigeon came from India, though it was unknown from which part.

Price: Euro 475,- (incl. frame)