De Wint was admired for his watercolour, but had rather less success with his finished oils, which he hoarded in an attic gallery.

The poet John Clare praised his scenes of Lincolnshire and the east Midlands and Fens, with their huge skies, fields and waterways. He described them as showing that 'misty flats, befringed with willow tree Rivalled the beauties of the Italian skies'.

Clare asked De Wint for a scrap of his drawings to hang on his cottage wall - a wish that was apparently never granted.