During the reign of Emperor Ningzong Xia served in the Imperial Painting Academy (Yuhuayuan 廷畫院) in the same city, the way most major artists did at the time.

Xia Gui and his contemporary, Ma Yuan, were among the most influential painters of their time; they had numerous followers who are now referred to as belonging to the Ma-Xia school.

[citation needed] The vast majority of Xia's surviving works are small album leaves, the favorite genre of Song academy painters.

Examples of his work in the album leaf format include two ink on silk paintings in the Tokyo National Museum (one of which is from the famous Garden Plowed by the Brush (Hikkoen) collection): both feature perfectly balanced diagonal composition, in which the void and the solid mass play equally important roles, and a formidable ink technique.

Extremely subtle, graded ink washes and overlapping brushstrokes created complex atmospheric effects of mist, sky, and infinity.

[citation needed] Other hand scrolls by Xia Gui include Ten Thousand Miles of the Yangzi River, which only survives in an unreliable 16th century copy, and Twelve Views from a Thatched Hut.

There are two possibly authentic hanging scrolls kept in the Freer Gallery of Art: Rapids in a Mountain Valley (also known as A Misty Gorge, survives without the top part which bore the signature) and Autumn Moonlight on Dongting Lake.