Jean Baptiste Audebert (1759-1800), born in Rochefort, France, was a notable miniaturist who developed a technique of colour printing using oil-based inks. In the introduction to volume I of The Oiseaux dorés ou á Reflets Métalliques the publisher gives credit to Audebert as the artist and person responsible for innovations in publishing colored works so that the luster of the iridescent feathers could be shown. In addition to working on the Oiseaux dorés, Audebert also illustrated botanical texts, and monkeys for Histoire Naturelle des Singes et des Makis, also with Louis Piere Vieillot who supplied the text for Oiseaux dorés.

Louis Pierre Vieillot (1748-1831), a French naturalist, was one of the first ornithologists to stress the importance of observing the life histories and habits of birds in order to understand their positions in a classification scheme. His recognition of differences in plumage among members of the same species, between the sexes, and between adult and immature birds was almost unique at that time. Vieillot spent ten years or more in North America and made substantial contributions to early American descriptive ornithology. He published a useful but unfinished work of twenty-two parts, in three formats, entitled Histoire naturelle des oiseaux de l'Amerique septentrionale (1807-1808?).

The Oiseaux dorés ou á Reflets Métalliques is a two-volume set of 190 engraved plates, with captions in gold and some colors in the plates heightened with gold. When Audebert died in 1800 before the work was completed, it was Louis Pierre Vieillot, using Audebert's notes and drawings, who engraved the plates and prepared most of the text for the volumes. It was published 1802 in Paris.