[4] Travelers among Mountains and Streams, a large hanging scroll, is Fan Kuan's best known work, possibly his only surviving one,[4] and a seminal painting of the Northern Song school.

Unlike earlier examples of Chinese landscape art, the grandeur of nature is the main theme, rather than merely providing a backdrop.

[6] The historian Patricia Ebrey explains her view on the painting that the: ...foreground, presented at eye level, is executed in crisp, well-defined brush strokes.

Jutting boulders, tough scrub trees, a mule train on the road, and a temple in the forest on the cliff are all vividly depicted.

[7]Fan's masterpiece Travellers among Mountains and Streams bears a lost half-hidden signature rediscovered only in 1958.