The painting of the Qing Dynasty takes on the style and features peculiar to its time.

Court painting developed greatly during the reigns of Emperor Kangxi and Qianlong, and exhibited a new style and features completely different from that of Academy Painting of previous dynasties. Increasingly, the literati painting came to be the mainstream of painting. The landscape painting and freehand brushwork of ink painting was prevailing. There appeared two trends of painting - admiration for the ancient classic styles and the advocate of innovation. There were different pursuits in terms of the subject matter, the theme, and brushwork techniques, which resulted in a wide range of styles and schools.

In the early Qing Dynasty, the Six Master Painters, represented by Wang Shimin, Wang Jian, and Wu Yun, stood for the orthodox of painting; while other schools of painting had their own special merits to speak for themselves, such as those represented by "Four Buddhist Monks" like Shi Tao and Zhu Da, "Eight Jinling Masters" like Gong Xian, Fan Qi and Gao Cen, the Xin'an School, and the Jiangxi School. In the middle years of the Qing Dynasty, the circle of painting was dominated by the Yangzhou School, with "Eight Yangzhou Eccentric Painters" like Wang Shishen and Zhen Xie as its representatives. And the finger painting represented by Gao Qipei became the mainstream of the court painting. In the late Qing Dynasty, the major trend of painting was represented by the Shanghai School and Lingnan School. There were also figure painters like Gai Qi and Fei Danxu and landscape painters like Dai Xi.