He was originally a declining aristocrat in the Song Dynasty, and later became a minister in the Yuan Dynasty. As an official in Song and Yuan Dynasties, he was criticized by people. He often wrote poems and painted pictures to imply that he lived in seclusion in his hometown. Under the recommendation of Zhao Mengfu, the Emperor of the Yuan Dynasty recruited many talents, so Zhao Mengfu was very popular with the Emperor of the Yuan Dynasty. He was "honored in the Five Dynasties and famous all over the world". He was a bachelor of Hanlin and became a leader of the Yuan Dynasty in art.
Zhao Mengfu's talent is also manifested in many aspects, such as poetry, calligraphy, painting, printing and so on. He is a pioneer in combining these four aspects closely. On the one hand, his Seven Rhymes of King Yue's Tomb is a rare masterpiece after the Song Dynasty. In calligraphy, he is good at regular script, running script, restoring epigraphy, and is also good at seal script, official script and Cao Zhang, which is beyond the reach of Song people. He followed the brushwork of the two kings in calligraphy style, and adopted Li Yong's style to create a round and smooth style, which was internationally known as "Zhao Ti" and had a great influence on the calligraphy art in Yuan, Ming and Qing Dynasties.
What Zhao Mengfu appreciates most is his paintings. He is good at painting landscapes and bamboo stones of pommel horse figures. As far as he can see now, his pommel horse figures are neatly drawn, such as the famous "Drinking Horses in Autumn Suburbs", which draws various dynamics of horses and has a three-dimensional shape. In the composition, it can receive the effect of expressing the theme without losing the traditional old norms. This is a new breakthrough in pommel horse figure painting, which is unparalleled in Yuan, Ming and Qing Dynasties. His landscape bamboo and stone paintings developed the literati painting school in Song and Jin Dynasties. Most of them use simple ink painting method, which is full of pen and ink interest. It is a major turning point in the development of painting art and has a far-reaching impact on future generations. For example, the skillful and lively lines in his masterpiece "Showing the Stone and Cherishing the Forest" and the childlike interest on the screen of another masterpiece "Quehua Autumn Color Map" are praised by later generations.
As a master of art, Zhao Mengfu has his own views on calligraphy and painting, which has a great influence on later generations. His thoughts can be summarized into two basic points: advocating retro and advocating the calligraphy interest of pen and ink. He put forward that the standard of painting art is not the authenticity of the content of the work, but the "ancient meaning". Learning from the ancients is not to learn how the ancients observed and expressed life, but to imitate their "ancient meaning." He once said: "Painting is expensive, which means something ancient. Without it, it is useless. Today, people only know that the pen is slender and colorful, so they call themselves experts; I don't know what I can see if I lose all my ancient ideas and bring all kinds of diseases. My painting looks simple, but people who know it are recent, so I think it's good. This can be said to those who know, not to those who don't know. " In addition, he also has a passage: "The paintings of Song people are far less than those of Tang people. I deliberately learn from the Tang people and don't want to be influenced by the Song people. " Here, he frankly admitted that he opposed the painting tradition of the Song Dynasty, especially the leading painting academy in the Song Dynasty. Zhao Mengfu advocated the calligraphy interest of pen and ink. His self-titled poem behind "Showing Stone and Cherishing Forest" is famous: "Stone is as white as flying wood, and bamboo writing should be proficient in eight ways. If anyone can understand this, you should know that painting and calligraphy are the same. " Here, he repeatedly emphasized not the relationship between the truth of the image and pen and ink, but the consistency between painting pen and ink and calligraphy in isolation. Generally speaking, pen and ink interests should not be antagonistic. If we talk about pen and ink interest without the principle that art is an image and reflects life, its real significance is to cancel the content of the work, or put the content of the work in a secondary position, which will leave the realistic artistic point of view. The retro flavor of Zhao Mengfu's pommel horse figure painting influenced his son Zhao Yong and his good friend Ren Renfa.
Zhao Mengfu's pommel horse figures are far less influential than his landscapes and bamboo stones. Some famous literati and landscape painters in Yuan Dynasty were closely related to him. Such as Gao, Cao, Tang Di, Zhu Derun, Chen Lin, Cui Yanfu, Wang Meng and Huang. Therefore, the development of literati landscape painting in the late Yuan Dynasty was created, and the so-called "four masters in Yuan Dynasty" was one of the representative painters.