Sir Joshua Reynolds's view of Poussin was by and large positive, and William Hazlitt described Nicolas Poussin as 'of all painters the most poetical' and noted that 'All things are possible to a high imagination. All things, about which we have a feeling, may be expressed by true genius' ( Hazlitt, Selected Essays, p.676). Ruskin, however, regarded Poussin as a comparatively uninfluential figure:
Nicolo Poussin had noble powers of design, and might have been a thoroughly great painter had he been trained in Venice; but his Roman education kept him tame; his trenchant severity was contrary to the tendencies of the age, and had few imitators compared to the dashing of Salvator, and the mist of Claude. ( Works, 5.406)
This comment from 'Of the Teachers of Turner' in Modern Painters III (1856) indicates Ruskin's broad view of the artist. In Modern Painters I Ruskin engages with a number of Nicolas Poussin's paintings including The Nurture of Jupiter (c.1637), Landscape with a man washing his feet at a fountain (c.1648), A Roman Road (1648) and Winter (the Deluge) (1660-64).