Paintings depicting the natural scenery of mountains and rivers are called landscape paintings. Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties gradually developed, but still attached to figure painting, mostly as a background. Sui and Tang Dynasties began to move towards independence, such as Zhan Ziqian's colorful landscape, Li Sixun's Jinbi landscape, Wang Wei's ink landscape and Wang Qia's splash-ink landscape. During the Five Dynasties and the Northern Song Dynasty, landscape painting flourished, with Hao Jing, Mi Fei and Mi Youren's ink landscape painting and Wang Ximeng and Zhao Boju's turquoise landscape painting. The dispute between the North and the South reached its peak and became a major painting theme in the field of Chinese painting. Landscape painting in Yuan Dynasty tends to be freehand, replacing reality with emptiness, focusing on the charm of pen and ink and creating a new style. With the development of Ming Dynasty and modern times, Dong Qichang and the "Four Kings" in the early Qing Dynasty made great contributions to the theory of landscape painting and the stylization of painting techniques. Later, in the 20th century, under the impact of western painting, new changes have taken place in China's traditional landscape painting, with Li Keran as the representative painter.

The formation and establishment of landscape painting is the infiltration of Wei-Jin demeanor, the inevitability of advocating nature, the awakening of literati's individual consciousness and people's aesthetic perception of natural landscape. Advocating nature is an important embodiment of Wei-Jin demeanor. Since the creation of Lushan Map by Gu Kaizhi in Jin Dynasty, landscape painting has been formed and established, which has become an important and unique expression of "landscape culture".