Ruskin confined his published examination of Cuyp to Modern Painters I and Modern Painters V (1860). In Modern Painters I he offered a fairly detailed analysis. At best Cuyp had a 'real desire to paint what he saw as far as he saw it' (I: b90) and, able to paint the 'close truth' of most things ( MP I:75), produced 'much that is instructive' ( MP I:90). However, he had 'no sense of beauty' ( MP I:75), and was limited in his representation of sky ( MP I:211), clouds ( MP I:222) and level water ( MP I:342). He also introduced many errors into his paintings, including those regarding the depiction of the ground ( MP I:313), background shadow ( MP I:173), reflections in water ( MP I:336) and the graduation of the sky ( MP I:206). Most damagingly, he was 'careless of colour' and 'content to lose local tints in the golden blaze of absorbing light' ( MP I:145). In Modern Painters V, Ruskin summed up Cuyp as the 'principal master of pastoral landscape' ( Works, 7.254), though thought him generally unhelpful and unthoughtful as a painter ( Works, 7.333).