Yuan Songnian studied western painting in his early years, and his sketching skills were solid. Later, he switched to Chinese painting, and the painting style of the "Four Kings" was criticized as weak. Chen Duxiu and others put forward the slogan of "artistic revolution", and clearly declared that "if you want to improve Chinese painting, you must first change the life of Wang painting". In this public opinion environment, not only the paintings of the "Four Kings" (Wang Shimin, Wang Jian, Wang Yi and Wang) have no market, but even the paintings of "Yuan Sijia" are not popular (because Ni Yunlin, Huang Zijiu and Kang Youwei, the main scholars of the "Four Kings", explicitly oppose the painting style of "Yuan Sijia"). Yuan Songnian turned his attention to the Southern Song Dynasty college painting with rich ink and wash. Starting with the works of Li Tang, Liu Songnian, Ma Yuan and Xia Gui, he gradually formed his own unique style, including Hao Jing, Guan Tong, Li Cheng and Fan Kuan. His paintings absorb the nutrients of western paintings and pay attention to perspective and proportion. Rich in color and strong in layering. His paintings also absorb the advantages of Song paintings, which are feasible, promising, livable and tourable. The style is heavy and quaint. Bright and refined colors; First, draw a rough outline of the rock with burnt ink, then chop it with an axe or touch it with raindrops, and finally paint it with thick ink or flowers. Trees are depicted in detail, and the trunk and branches are often drawn with drawing strokes first, and then different branches and leaves are drawn according to the types of trees. A prominent feature of Yuan Songnian's paintings is the meticulous description of branches and leaves, and the method of point-leaf is seldom used. Compared with contemporary China painters, Yuan Songnian, who studied western painting, paid more attention to sketching. He has a seal of "I am a teacher", and his landscape paintings are different from those of Ming and Qing Dynasties. Leaving home when he was young enriched his experience and experience. He took nature as a teacher and described what he saw, what he wanted, the merchant ships that came back late, the fishermen who got up early, and the Shima Village where he lived as a child ... Its broad vision and artistic conception of appealing to both refined and popular tastes made Yuan Songnian's works immortal.