Traditional Chinese painting has a long history. Generally speaking, works before Tang Dynasty mainly focus on the reflection of people¡¯s activities, forming a prime time of figure painting. In the middle of Tang Dynasty, paintings in landscape and flower & bird began to be popular. Works with the theme of forest and rural area can free you from the hustle and bustle of the world and enable you to enter a peaceful land, so landscape painting is favored by scholars and officials. Flowers, plants, stones, birds and beasts in the paintings are living creatures in the mountains, full of vitality and also attractive to many people. Therefore, paintings of landscape and flower & bird started to be popular after figure painting. The three kinds of paintings form the three main categories of traditional Chinese painting.  

The emperors and aristocrats of Tang and Song Dynasties are the important painting supporters, so the art developed in such an environment had very serious political meaning with its style tending to be magnificent. In Song Dynasty, there was art academy with complete systems in the palace. Esp. Emperor Huizong, who was good at painting, treated artists very well. He also set up organizations to cultivate talents. So the activities of art academy reached the zenith during this period.