Her painting Rising Early in the Spring to Lament Flowers (1631) was sold at Christie's New York on 16 September 2015 for US$413,000, four times its estimate.

[4][5] Her father was Wen Congjian, a landscape painter, and taught both his children to paint from a young age.

They lived a reclusive life in a villa close to the Hanshan Temple outside Suzhou, in an area noted for its natural beauty.

Her approach is seen as intimate rather than showy, with a careful composition that often frames glimpses of delicate flowers with rough rocks.

This approach can be seen in her fan painting, Carnations and Garden Rock of 1627, which uses a limited palette and only two elements for the composition.

[1] One collector suggested her flower paintings were the equal of Qiu Zhu, an earlier female professional painter.

[5] In 1994, the International Astronomical Union's (IAU) Working Group for Planetary System Nomenclature approved naming a crater on Venus Wen Shu after her.