Abstract:In his early years, ZHANG Da-qian was famous for imitation of SHI Tao's works. And his imitated paintings of SHI Tao's works were quite difficult to distinguish them from the original ones. In this sense, he was famed “an expert in studies of SHI Tao. However, he suffered a lot of controversy because of such experience. Nevertheless, the patterning and modeling after the ancient style helped him sort out the Chinese history of art, and led to his great progress in painting techniques. And he finally was able to integrate the ancient theories or techniques into his paintings and then make some changes. This event fully shows the complex relationship between the traditional and modern Chinese paintings in the 20 ^thcentury.