The image features that of one of the film's original glass slides created to advertise the film and depicts a medium shot of Daniel Brown (Douglas Fairbanks) seated at a table about to consume a very large amount of food with his fork and knife at-the-ready! The combination of using a photographic image of Fairbanks' face with the rest of the image being artwork creates a very striking image. It is in fine+ condition with two diagonal creases of varying sizes on the top and bottom right corners and a couple of very small unobtrusive creases in the image area. There are no pinholes, tears, stains, or other flaws.

Fairbanks biographer Jeffrey Vance considers When the Cloud Rolls By to be the "best of all the contemporary Fairbanks comedies." "Executed at a breathless pace, When the Clouds Roll By is a masterful showpiece for the whirling cyclone of energy that was Douglas Fairbanks." Vance's highest praise is for the elaborate dream sequence, which he deems "a virtual encapsulation of every gymnastic feat in the Fairbanks repertoire," and notes that Fairbanks's walk on the ceiling of his home anticipates the celebrated "dancing on the ceiling" sequence in Stanley Donen's Royal Wedding (1951), in which Doug flees his pursuers by entering a room and proceeds to run up a wall, across the ceiling, down the opposite wall, jump from walls to ceiling, etc.--a full 30 years before Fred Astaire did the same. Vance also notes that the film's flood sequence conclusion presages a similar ending in Buster Keaton's silent classic, Steamboat Bill, Jr. (1928).