The trend of artistic development in any given historical period was influenced by the political, cultural and economic background of the time. Inheriting rules of the Western Shu and Southern Tang in the Five Dynasties and Ten States Period (907-979), a good number of painters were cultivated.

Styles of painting in the Northern Song (960-1127) and the Southern Song (1127-1279) dynasties were different. This dynastic change was accompanied by a major change in landscape painting: from a panoramic structure to a partial-focus layout. The Four Great Painters of the academies in the Southern Song Dynasty were Li Tang, Liu Songnian, Ma Yuan and Xia Gui. Among them, the artist who could best represent a shift from a panoramic-view structure to a partial-view one for painting is perhaps Li Tang who was active artistically in the last years of Northern Song and the early years of Southern Song. He was adept to draw mountains, waters, people, birds and beasts. His ink and wash landscape paintings were the most famous. Differing from the prudent composition of the Northern Song, he initiated ink and wash landscape painting with bold and unconstrained style. Liu Songnian, Ma Yuan and Xia Gui, who came after Li Tang, were representatives of the academic painting. Li Tang's paintings were of great momentum while Liu Songnian's paintings were neat and refined. Subjects in paintings of Ma Yuan and Xia Gui usually came from mountains and rivers of Zhejiang Province in East China. When drawing rocks, at first they drew in light ink, before it dried they drew again in thick ink in order to give a dripping look.

Their painting style exerted a significant influence on landscape painting of Zhejiang School and Academic School in the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644).

Many figure painting of the Song Dynasty were related to historical figures and stories, lives of scholars and nobles, as well as religion. The theory of scholar painting was further discussed in the Southern Song Dynasty; the practice of scholar paintings achieved noticeable progress, too. For instance, Mi Youren's landscape paintings and Yang Buzhi's ink plum blossom were quite famous. Other famous painters in the Southern Song Dynasty were Xiaozhao, Su Hanchen, and so on. Many of their figure paintings, which were about political conflicts of that period, chose historical stories and subjects from real life. Figure sketch initiated by Liang Kai broke through a new road for Chinese figure painting.