In Chinese art and literature the representation of landscapes is frequently encountered. Over centuries, artists and poets have devised complex grammars that govern their depiction of the natural world. This paper will explore these grammars with respect to works by Xie Ling-yun, China’s premier early landscape poet and Fan K’uan, one of the greatest of all Chinese landscape painters. Two respective works of this poet and painter will be discussed in order to demonstrate two singularly different approaches to the idea of the artistic representation of landscape.