When it was exhibited at the Royal Watercolour Society in 1891, The Morning Post wrote gushingly about this 'ingenious' picture:

A subject of this kind needs to be done very well or it is merely ridiculous. Mr Brewtnall has treated it so ably, and has so skilfully combined the realistic with the romantic, that one does not inquire 'how could such things be?' but frankly accepts the scene as being probable enough — in the realms of imagination … A knight, armed cap-a-pie, reins in his horse and pauses, lance in hand, before 'tackling' the creature whom he seeks to slay. And well he may. The gallant Bayard himself, 'without fear and without reproach' as he may have been, would doubtless under the circumstances have done the same, or he had been more than mortal; for fragments of armour indicative of past futile attempts lie about the rock-strewn sands, and there in the lofty darksome cavern, the scaly monster awaits the attack. Its horrid jaws gape wide, its fiery tongue and gleaming eyes might daunt the bravest. Its huge trailing form is partly lost in the gruesome depths of the cave, partly concealed from sight by the purple vapours which veil the entrance of its lurking place.

Two years later in 1893, it was one of two hundred watercolours chosen to represent Great Britain at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago. While the dragon is (we presume) imagined, the cave is in real life the Dunald Mill Hole in Lancashire, described in a 1760 guide: 'The entrance of this subterraneous channel has something most pleasingly horrible in it.'