[1] Wyndham Lewis painted The Crowd in 1914 or 1915, when he was involved in the British modern art movement Vorticism, of which he was the founder and leading figure.

Stylistically, it appears to be from an earlier date, and it can be identified with Lewis' painting listed as The Crowd at The London Group's exhibition in March 1915.

In conjunction with this, Michael Prodger of the New Statesman wrote that The Crowd is one of Lewis' three most important works and called it "the purest example of his vorticism".

He said it conveys a message about the dehumanised state of modern people, despite that it also may portray an attempted insurrection in the form of the figures at the bottom left.

[3] Gareth Harris of the Financial Times wrote that Vorticism never reached the heights of its role model, Italian Futurism and painters such as Gino Severini and Umberto Boccioni, but called The Crowd "a masterly amalgamation of planes and figures, simultaneously interlocking and fracturing".