Glover, although President of the Society of Painters in Water-Colours, came in for much criticism for trying to exhibit his large canvases at the Society's exhibitions. The present painting was singled out for particular disapproval by a critic who wrote that '...in a great measure a waste of canvas, for a bull as large as life, standing and staring at you with a most familiar sang-froid air, is an object which would border on the ridiculous, except from such a hand as Potter'. Another report on the painting, by Roget writing in the History of the Old Watercolour Society, says that a cattle-man who visited the exhibition with his bull-dog had great difficulty in restraining the dog from attacking the painting, so realistically was the bull painted.