Overall: 12cm (4.7in) x 11cm (4.3in)
Watercolour on ivory. Quarter length portrait of Lieutenant the Honourable James Charles Pitt, RN looking left. Contained in a period ebonised octagonal frame, applied verso with period manuscript label inscribed ‘The Hon ble /James Pitt / Royal Navy’.
Hon. James Charles Pitt (1761-80) was the third son of William Pitt, the 1st Earl of Chatham. His elder brothers were General Hon John Pitt, the 2nd Earl of Chatham, and future prime minister William Pitt the Younger. James Pitt entered the Navy in 1775 under the patronage of a family friend, Captain Alexander Hood. In December 1777 he joined the Robust, 74-guns, with Hood, and on 18 February 1778 was commissioned lieutenant. After participating in the indecisive Battle of Ushant on 27 July 1778, Hood gave controversial evidence in favour of Vice-Admiral Sir Hugh Palliser at the resulting court-martial on Admiral Hon Augustus Keppel in the following January. When it came to his turn to give evidence Pitt affirmed that Hood had altered the Robust’s logbook after the event as he claimed it to have been ‘ill-written’. Under such circumstances, and given the huge political divide in the Navy at the time, Pitt’s brother William wisely organised his removal from the Robust.
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In the spring of 1779 Pitt joined the Greyhound, 28-guns, and subsequently participated in the destruction of enemy shipping at Penobscot in North America. In the West Indies in 1780, he was present at the Battle of Martinique in April, and during the summer took over command of the sloop Hornet, 14-guns, in the Leeward Islands, from the tyrannical Commander Robert Haswell. Pitt died of a fever soon after whilst the Hornet was refitting at Antigua, and he was buried in St. Paul’s Church, Falmouth, on that island. Pitt, who was described as possessing a lively disposition, allegedly fathered an illegitimate daughter with a slave girl on Antigua.
This item is sold under the Ivory Submission Reference: PCT4WA3J