Born in Chichester in 1784, David Latimer St Clair was the third son of Colonel William St Clair and his wife Augusta Tinling. He joined the Royal Navy as a midshipman in 1797, aged 13 on a ship commanded by his maternal uncle. In 1802 he was promoted to Lieutenant and saw action in the East Indies. A decade he captained his own ship and held that rank until his retirement from the Navy in 1847. He married his cousin Elizabeth Isabella Farhill in 1819; they did not have any children. St Clair died at Brighton in 1861 aged 77.*The full-length cut silhouette shows St Clair wearing a top hat and holding a pair of gloves. It is backed inside the frame with the artist''s trade label for J. Gapp who worked as a profilist from a booth on the Chain Pier at Brighton. A pencil inscription dates the silhouette to 1835.*The silhouette has age-browning. It is set in its original ebonised frame with an ink inscription on the backing paper together with the sitter''s newspaper obituar...