Fan Kuan (ca. 950-ca. 1031), a master of landscape painting in the Northern Song period, had his ancestral home in Huayuan (modern Yaozhou District, Tongchuan City, Shaanxi Province). Having the style name Zhongli (also reportedly named Zhongzheng with the style name Zhongli), spending years to observe Nature and develop his own approach. Among landscape paintings with Fan Kuan's name, “Travelers Among Mountains and Streams” in the National Palace Museum is the one most highly regarded and widely accepted as from his hand.

In Fan's division of that painting into a tripartite composition of foreground, middle, and distance, he skillfully pushed the monumental mountain range back and pulled the foreground up close. In doing so, he not only highlighted the miniscule proportion of the travelers but also created a dramatic contrast with the majestic peaks, forming an impressive sight as if before the viewer's eyes. And hidden among the trees to the lower right side of this large scroll are two characters for Fan Kuan's name that represent his signature.