Autograph Letter Signed from the animal painter Gourlay Steell ('the Scottish Landseer') to eccentric art patron John Christie of Cowden

4pp., 12mo. Thirty lines. Fair, on lightly-aged paper, with traces of mount at head of second page. Steell is enclosing 'a catalogue of the most recent works of the kind you desire', and points out that 'the short biographical sketches of deceased Scottish artists, in connection with our catalogue, was only printed [last word underlined] by Messrs. Constable'. He ends by offering his 'warmest wishes for the married couple' - in 1881 Christie's seventeen-year-old daughter Alice married Robert King Stewart, KBE, of Murdostoun Castle, Lanarkshire. In an initialled postscript he informs Christie of 'poor Brodies death'. (The sculptor William Brodie had died on 30 October 1881.)