Ren Bonian was an outstanding modern painter and a leading figure in the Shanghai school. He absorbed techniques from folk painting as well as Western watercolor and sketching, strengthened the realist dimension of Chinese painting, and skillfully fused meticulous and freehand methods, traditional Chinese and Western approaches, literati painting and folk painting. His greatest achievements were in figure painting and bird-and-flower painting. Xu Beihong praised him as the foremost Chinese painter after Qiu Ying and even wrote an appraisal of his work. This couplet, ?If one is free from vulgarity, one has the bones of an immortal; if one is affectionate, one has the heart of a Buddha,? was written for the mountain gate of Nengren Temple on Baiyun Mountain in Guangzhou.