Mi Fu is regarded as one of the four greatest calligraphers of the Song dynasty, alongside Su Shi, Huang Tingjian and Cai Xiang.

However, other Chinese scholars reject Jiang's interpretation, saying that huozheng referred to "Fire virtue" and was related to the Zhao family, and that he had other seals claiming different things.

[citation needed] He began his civil service career as Reviser of Books in the imperial library, afterwards he served in three posts outside the capital of Kaifeng, in Henan province.

[citation needed] In his later years, Mi Fu became very fond of Holin Temple (located on Yellow Crane Mountain (黃鶴樓)).

Poetry and illustrative writing were in a sense even more important to them than painting and they made their living as more or less prominent government officials if they did not depend on family wealth.

Nevertheless, the foundation of their technical mastery was in writing and calligraphy, which allowed them to transmit their thoughts with the same easiness in symbols of nature as in conventional characters.

The beauty of this art was indeed closely connected to the visible ease with which it was produced, but which after all could not be achieved without intense training and deep thought.

His talent for artistic observation, his sense of humor, and his literary ability helped him establish a prominent place for himself among Chinese art historians.

His contributions to the field remain in high regard due to their basis in direct, first-hand observation as opposed to relying on what he had heard or learned from his forerunners.

A friend of Mi Fu, Su Shih (蘇軾), admired him and wrote that his brush was like a sharp sword handled skillfully in fight or a bow which could shoot the arrow a thousand li, piercing anything that might be in its way.

"[citation needed] Paintings currently attributed to Mi Fu represent ranges of wooded hills or cone-shaped mountain peaks rising out of layers of mist.

It is likely that many are from the later part of Ming period when a cult of Mi Fu was started, its followers viewing him as the most important representative of the Southern School.

He wrote that they "place their pictures in brocade bags and provide them with jade rollers as if they were very wonderful treasures, but when they open them one cannot but break out into laughter.

In addition to using a brush when painting with ink, Mi Fu also utilized paper sticks or sugar cane from which the juice had been extracted or a calyx (kauss) of a lotus.

[citation needed] His book Huashi ("History of Painting") contains practical hints as to the proper way of collecting, preserving, cleaning and mounting pictures.