The painting was exhibited at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition starting on 3 May 1926, the day before the start of the 1926 General Strike. The painting was viewed by King George V, British statesman Ramsay MacDonald, the Countess Baldwin of Bewdley, Lady Cynthia Asquith, Dame Lloyd George, and other notable personages. Initially, Frank Dicksee, the President of the Royal Academy, praised Souter's piece as "a work of great promise by executed with a considerable degree of excellence". According to Catherine Tackley, professor of music at the University of Liverpool, "the reaction to the painting epitomise[d] the response to this new jazz music" with "huge popular enthusiasm" mixed with "an undercurrent of suspicion that this was a dangerous new art form subverting decent society."