Xiao Junxian came from Hengyang in Hunan province. His nickname was Tianhe yiren and the name of his studio 'Pavilion of Honest Quotation' (Jingnianlou). He was a well-known landscape painter who occasionally depicted flowers and fruits. He taught at various high schools and art colleges in Nanjing and Peking; in his later years, he lived in Shanghai by selling his paintings.
This charming fan sheet after the famous Yuan master Fang Congyi (ca. 1300–1378) is a virtuoso variant of the blue-green landscape style that Xiao Junxian also occasionally used. In its almost abstract, cubist-looking formal structure and the nature of its horizontal moss dots, it shows clear influences of the two eccentric painters of the 17th century, Shitao and Bada Shanren.