Zhou Fang specialized in figure painting, and was counted by Mi Fu in his "History of Painting" as one of the Four Masters of Figure Painting of the Jin and Tang periods, on a par with Gu Kaizhi, Lu Tanwei and Wu Daozi. This painting depicts five court ladies and one maid servant, some looking at flowers, some strolling, and some playing with a crane or a dog, with the maid servant waiting on them holding a long-handled fan. Feminine beauty in the Tang dynasty consists in plumpness, painting eyebrows into butterfly wings, adorning one's high-pile hairdo with peony or lotus flowers. Trims on their dresses are sheer as cicada wings, mainly in red, ocher or white, in a reflection of the esthetic taste and the state of the textile industry of the time. The maid servant is of smaller stature, as required by convention in a group portrait, aimed at giving prominence to the main protagonists in the painting.