MADAM – Both you and Nicholas Bagshawe might like to be aware that the dogs pictured (see detail above) are not ‘scruffy cross-bred terriers’, as stated in your report on the Chelsea fair (Dealers’ Diary, ATG No 2282).
Rather they are Dandie Dinmonts, an old sporting breed of terrier popular on the Borders in earlier times.
If this painting is datable to 1840, it would appear to be an interesting early example of the breed. However, if it is, as also suggested, by Henry Calvert, primarily a horse artist, it might be datable nearer to 1850.