Reynolds in Discourse Five, 1772, sees Salvator Rosa 's work as being 'subordinate to the great style' yet marked with 'that spirit and firmness which characterises works of genius'. In his work 'everything is of a piece: his Rocks, Trees, Sky, even to his handling, have the same rude and wild character which animates his figures'( Reynolds, Discourses, p. 85). It is notable that rocks and trees are sky are the major features in Ruskin 's depreciation of Rosa.
Reynolds in Discourse Fourteen, 1790, writes of Rosa's Landscape with the Dream of Joseph, as an example of the 'poetical style of landskip'. It has the power of 'inspiring sentiments of grandeur and sublimity'; 'the parts have such a correspondence with each other, and the whole and every part of the scene is so visionary, that it is impossible to look at them, without feeling in some measure, which seems to have inspired the painters'( Reynolds, Discourses, p. 257).
Reynolds goes on to consider the implications for art education of this picture:
By continual contemplation of such works a sense of the higher excellencies of art will by degrees dawn on the imagination; at every review that sense will become more and more assured, until we come to enjoy a sober certainty of the real existence (if I may so express myself) of those almost ideal beauties; and the artist will then find no difficulty in fixing in his mind the principles by which the impression is produced. ( Reynolds, Discourses, p. 257)
As Reynolds says in Discourse Two (1769), the training of 'the Student' requires study of the 'works of those who have excelled'( Reynolds, Discourses, p. 28); Rosa, it is clear, is one who has excelled. Solomon Gessner provides an eighteenth-century example of such an approach to his own development as an artist.