Page 40 - La frégate

René Gabriel de Rabié was born in 1717 in Rochefort, France. He trained to be a naval engineer (ingénieur), and in 1742 moved to Saint Domingue, the richest of the French Caribbean colonies. In the 1770s, de Rabié became the chief engineer for the north part of Saint Domingue and designed many of the public monuments and buildings in Cap Français (now Cap Haitien), the principal town of the colony. He was also an accomplished cartographer, and his manuscript maps are held in the Archives nationales d’outre-mer and the Bibliothèque nationale in France and in the British Library. De Rabié's naval career is described in his correspondence with the Ministère de la Marine.

In 1767, de Rabié began to paint watercolours of the plants and animals in and around Cap Français. He was aided by his eldest daughter, Jacquette Anne Marie Rabié de Laboissière (Cap Français, Saint Domingue 1750 – Paris 1820) and his grandson Armand Gabriel François Paparel Laboissière (Cap François, Saint Domingue 1767- Yvelines, France 1854), whose additional notes on the versos of the watercolours, written after de Rabié’s death, include detailed comments on medicinal and culinary uses reflecting local knowledge. The Saint-Domingue Albums also embody the skills and knowledge of the numerous enslaved people who worked for the de Rabié family in Cap Français. Enslaved hunters caught birds in the forest or wetlands and brought them either alive or dead to be painted. Dead birds were likely prepared as skins by a cook or other enslaved kitchen workers. De Rabié relied on enslaved fishers and fishmongers for live specimens, to be painted before they lost their brilliant colours. Like other naturalists de Rabié also relied on enslaved gardeners to collect the caterpillars he watched so carefully as they metamorphosed into butterflies and moths. Once plucked off the leaves, caterpillars had to be supplied with fresh food by these uncredited entomological assistants.

De Rabié returned to France in 1784, where he died in Paris in early 1785. The watercolours passed into the care of his daughter, then his grandson. Though there is no written evidence, it was likely de Rabié’s grandson, Armand Paparel Laboissière, who was responsible for commissioning the binding in Paris.