Autograph Letter Signed from the English playwright and comic author Tom Taylor to 'Col: Cunningham' [later Sir Alexander Cunningham], regarding a painting of the Countess of Pembroke, and Cunningham's collection of pictures.

4pp., 12mo. Bifolium. Very good, on lightly-aged paper. Untidily-written by Taylor, with several ink smudges. The letter begins: 'Dear Col: Cunningham | I find recorded, in my catalogues, no other portrait of Eliz: Countess of Pembroke & her son, except the one in the Earl of Pembroke's possession at Wilton House. There is a repetition of the group of mother & son in that picture, with the Earl in it, in Wilton House. Lord Normanton has a head of the Lady, painted at the same time, apparently'. He mentions another painting, owned by 'Lady Herbert in Chesham Place', and is 'at a loss to account for the variation between that print & this picture'. He asks Cunningham if 'the lady in the picture which includes her husband as well as child' has 'her scarf, or an uncovered head'. He will be very glad to see Cunningham's pictures, and hopes 'to do so some day, when the sun shines'. If Cunningham does not object to Taylor calling on a Sunday, he might 'come over by the Kensington railway, on Sunday week, after church-time [...] As an old friend of your father [the poet Allan Cunningham (1784-1842)] I cannot write to you as altogether a stranger'.