During the Song Dynasty, the "Xuanhe Painting Manual" recorded a painter from Henan named Guo Xi, whose courtesy name was Chunfu. He served as an academician of art in the Imperial Painting Academy and was renowned for his landscape paintings.

His works depicted mountains and rivers with shifting clouds and mist, peaks appearing and disappearing, and a myriad of forms. Commentators praised him for his profound skill, stating that he was unrivaled in his time. Even in his later years, his paintings became even more magnificent and grand in style.