As early as in the primitive society where there was no clear division of labor between craft, sculpture and painting, China's flower-and-bird painting had sprouted, but it only took shape in the Han, Wei and Six Dynasties.

The mural "Two Crows in the Tree" on the pottery barn of the Eastern Han Dynasty in the American Art Museum is the earliest known single flower-and-bird painting. Liu Yinzu, a painter of the Eastern Jin Dynasty recorded in the Southern Qi Xie He Tu, is the earliest known flower-and-bird painter.

After the Tang Dynasty, the Five Dynasties and the Northern Song Dynasty, flower-and-bird painting was fully developed and matured.

Huang Quan and Xu Xi were two schools that appeared in the Five Dynasties. They expressed their interest in wealth or wildness through different materials and different techniques. The Northern Song Dynasty's Review of Famous Paintings of the Holy Dynasty even listed the gates of flowers and trees and animals, indicating that flower-and-bird painting had become an independent branch before this. On the basis of summarizing predecessors' creative experience, Painting Spectrum by Xuanhe in the Northern Song Dynasty wrote the first paper on flower-and-bird painting, deeply discussed the aesthetic value and social significance of flower-and-bird painting as a product of human spirit, and expounded the thinking characteristics of "showing the inside and outside with poets" in flower-and-bird painting creation. Since then, painters have come forth in large numbers, with various schools and styles. Exquisite meticulous flower-and-bird painting continues to develop, while its style is simple and unrestrained. In the Southern Song Dynasty and Yuan Dynasty, freehand flower-and-bird painting and ink painting "four gentlemen" (plum, orchid, chrysanthemum and bamboo) appeared. At the same time, line drawing flowers as the main means also came into being.

With the in-depth development of freehand brushwork flower-and-bird painting represented by Xu Wei in the late Ming Dynasty, he consciously realized the transformation of painting with cursive script and strongly expressed his personal feelings. In the early Qing Dynasty, Zhu Da reached an unprecedented height. After thousands of years of development, China's flower-and-bird paintings have accumulated rich creative experience and formed a unique tradition of standing on its own feet among the nations of the world.

Finally, a master of flower-and-bird painting like Qi Baishi came into being in modern times.