If Ruskin was critical of Dutch and Flemish painters in general, he was particularly damning of those who produced marine subjects (see Ruskin on Dutch and Flemish painting). His vituperation sparked an extreme and amusing use of language (especially at MP I:5); but it was rooted in a real incredulity that 'those who love the sea, and look at it' could tolerate the work of Bakhuizen and the Van de Velde family. For they had denied the natural truth of the sea, and had represented its 'deep, heavy, thunderous, threatening blue' with 'the grey of the first coat of cheap paint on a deal door' ( MP I:339). He was especially bewildered by the fact that Turner himself had been influenced by such images. While admitting that the artist 'could not have liked Vandevelde without some legitimate cause' ( MP I:325), he concluded that this must be due to youthful distaste or ignorance of the deep sea ( MP I:373). Ruskin was so unable to find virtue in Bakhuizen or Van de Velde ( MP I:324) that he compared them unfavourably even to Canaletto ( MP I:339) and Ruisdael ( MP I:340), artists that he tended to dismiss.