According to F.G. Stephens's review in the Athenaeum,p.568 'one of the largest, most important, and pretentious pictures' in the 1874 exhibition 'is Mr Linton's Lotus-Eaters (58), a group of ladies and gentlemen, in Italian medieval costumes, in an ancient garden. To them a travelling dealer in sculptures offers a statue of Cupid, thereby seeming to offer Love, after the old history, to those who dream their lives away in inactive luxury...The figure of the salesman holding out the antique statuette is the best in the picture. The varied attitudes of the other figures have been carefully designed, and they are beauitfully and most elaborately drawn. Their varied dresses, and the colour of the same, are worthy of Mr Linton's powers at their best. The artist sets a noble example in the treatment of the draperies, ... and the grace with which the limbs within the garments and the limbs themselves are disposed.'